Future Plans

This week has been pretty crazy. Between trying to figure out what I´ll do in the next couple weeks, what the best way to go about completing my project here is and three days of rain this weekend has been pretty hectic.

For the moment, the plan is to go up to Cajamarca this weekend for carnival festivities. After a few days back in Guadalupe, I´ll head over to a little village named San Francisco just down river from Pucallpa. The SF plans are still up in the air, because although I´ll have work, its unknown what sort it will be and who it will be benefitting.

San Francisco is still predominantly native and has never been colonized, but they do have cell phones and internet.

http://www.superstructgame.org/UserRegistration


I've now decided that introducing compost toileting to the family and the community would be the best way to fulfill my wish to give a little something back that would make the community a bit more sustainable. Currently the sewage is all going into underground pits which are leaching into the nearby lagoon. Everyone bathes in the lagoon and uses the water for many things in the household. There are also re-occurring vaginal infections in the women who bathe in the lagoon here.

There is a wide spectrum of complexity and scale for compost toilets. The ones that I think would be most appropriate at first are the most simple - two 5 gallon buckets and a toilet seat. The transition should be pretty easy, the toilet they have now is a little smelly, they already carry water into it to flush it, and it just goes into a big hole in the ground anyway.

The main logistical issue I forsee is obtaining enough organic material to use as cover. The local soil has a fair amount of organic material but its mostly clay which I fear may block oxygen too much. The other option is importing rice hulls or other dry organic waste from nearby farms. Another issue may be where to put the compost when the buckets are full. Then theres always the task of convincing people that shitting in a bucket really is a good idea.