As you all know I solicited some financial help from all of you in the month of January. Just to make sure that we are all on the same page I have been carefully documenting the physical work that has been going on at the project site. After the first few mishaps with location and ‘political’ problems, things have been going pretty well. I’m happy to announce that it appears this latrine project will actually come to fruition and we will most likely come in under budget AND on time!
The village that we are making these latrines at is called Akodebakou (ah-ko-deh-bah-koo). This village is roughly a thirty minute bike ride from my house and so I am always a sweaty mess when I show up to have a look around. There are four neighborhoods that have been selected. Within each neighborhood are two families that will be receiving latrines financed by you! The families themselves have been putting in the labor to making the pits for the latrines and your money has supplied the water (for mixing cement), sand, gravel, cement, paying the masons, paying for the transportation of a latrine/building specialist, and a PVC pipe to help aerate the latrines. Once the latrines are built, we are requiring the families to also create some type of ‘wall’ structure for their latrine to provide privacy. Most likely these ‘walls’ will be reeds and/or palm leaves thatched together.
I wasn’t sure how else to put the pictures I took together, so I clustered them according to my visits. You will see that some families have ‘no progress’ written on their picture and that is because nothing has changed since my previous visit. Sometimes this occurs because the family hasn’t gotten around to doing more work and others, it is because the masons haven’t had the opportunity to start building there. Either way, there is only one family I am worried about right now, which I will note below.
The village that we are making these latrines at is called Akodebakou (ah-ko-deh-bah-koo). This village is roughly a thirty minute bike ride from my house and so I am always a sweaty mess when I show up to have a look around. There are four neighborhoods that have been selected. Within each neighborhood are two families that will be receiving latrines financed by you! The families themselves have been putting in the labor to making the pits for the latrines and your money has supplied the water (for mixing cement), sand, gravel, cement, paying the masons, paying for the transportation of a latrine/building specialist, and a PVC pipe to help aerate the latrines. Once the latrines are built, we are requiring the families to also create some type of ‘wall’ structure for their latrine to provide privacy. Most likely these ‘walls’ will be reeds and/or palm leaves thatched together.
I wasn’t sure how else to put the pictures I took together, so I clustered them according to my visits. You will see that some families have ‘no progress’ written on their picture and that is because nothing has changed since my previous visit. Sometimes this occurs because the family hasn’t gotten around to doing more work and others, it is because the masons haven’t had the opportunity to start building there. Either way, there is only one family I am worried about right now, which I will note below.
02.20.10 – Family and site selection as to where to put the latrines.
02.23.10 – Two of the families had yet to start digging. The sixth family (if you are counting from top left to top right and then down to the next row) I managed to scare enough by my presence so by the following visit, they had completed their pit before everyone else.
03.01.10 – The last family told me that the ground was very hard and that they couldn’t continue. We told them to throw some water in the pit over night and then it would be easier. They obviously didn’t listen.
03.03.10 – The sixth family (who had completed their pit first) is waiting for the masons to start throwing some bricks in their pit. This is the same for the first and seventh families. The last family is still in the same position as before. I have given them an ultimatum of finishing their pit by Friday, or else we will use the extra cement for someone else’s walls.
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