Thanks to ArchTam’s Blueprint Travel Grant, I was able to take part in an outreach project in Uganda — a project near and dear to my heart because I am South African by birth and Ugandan by descent. With five other ArchTam employees, I joined the WeDev NPO team to help an orphanage on the remote Zinga Islands collect, analyze and purify drinking water. The orphanage was one of five sites we visited during the service trip.

According to Drop 4 Drop, a global charity dedicated to alleviating the world’s water crisis, “Almost a quarter of people across Uganda do not have access to clean water and over 80 percent do not have adequate sanitation. Using and drinking unsafe water is one of the leading causes of death and disease across Uganda with 4,500 children dying every year due to having no other option but to drink this unsafe water.” This is a critical issue that the people of Uganda are facing.

Our team set out to tackle water sanitation-related issues in the most needy and remote areas of Uganda by using local, simple methods. Our goal was to build systems that could be used continuously and easily by the community. Our professional backgrounds ranged from hydrogeology and environmental technicians to cost, hydraulic and civil engineers. Our understanding of infrastructure, its workings and the associated costs helped us ascertain the best and least expensive solutions to the problems faced in the community. Teaching one another aspects of our jobs helped our collective effort to get as much done in the little time we had.

Over the course of two weeks we traveled by car, boat and even in the back of a small loading truck to five sites that included orphanages, schools and a home. Our group visited and analyzed these sites to create simple solutions for each unique situation. For example, to reduce the walking distance required to fetch water, we installed a pump into a well, set up gutters to collect rain water and added pipes so that water from springs would run into tanks. We also tested the water to ascertain the types of bacteria picked up in water pre- and post-purification using homemade chlorine. We helped provide a community with the resources needed to collect a basic necessity for themselves by:

• Connecting spring water to a tank using a gradient
• Making chlorine from salt with a solar powered battery to clean water from tanks and other water sources
• Connecting a pump to an 11-meter-deep borehole to ease the process of obtaining water

This eye-opening process highlighted the magnitude of challenges Ugandan communities face in accessing clean drinking water. Even if you can access and transport the water, it still needs to be purified in order to avoid contracting cholera and typhoid, which are deadly illnesses that impact residents and surrounding communities.

This experience was inspiring, but seeing my people in Uganda suffering was not easy. I’m fortunate to work for a company that empowers us to make a meaningful impact on people’s lives around the world through these types of projects. The response from the communities in the form of love, appreciation and keenness to learn and participate gave every one of the volunteers the feeling of being home. We call it “eka” in our language. Simple systems and a few hands go a long way, and this principle can be applied in so many areas of our lives.

In a world full of political unrest, social injustice and environmental depletion, this project inspired hope, not just to the people of Uganda, but to our team as well. We can make a difference — no matter how big or small — to the lives of others in the most beautiful way. I walked away from this experience with a new outlook on life and an appreciation for the humble, happy people and children of Uganda.

A massive thank you to Michael Ottensmann and the WeDev NPO team who allowed me to be a part of this wonderful trip.

“Webale Nnyo.”

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 A few months ago, I had the opportunity to travel to Uganda with Engineers for Overseas Development (EfOD), a UK registered charity that enhances young engineers’ careers through engagement in humanitarian work, to start the construction of a pilot project we have been designing in the UK in the last two years. This project, a building of Eco-Sanitation (Eco-San) toilets focus on the improvement of the sanitation system at Kumi Hospital, a facility located in eastern Uganda that formerly aided people with leprosy. Since 1997, the facility has operated as a general hospital with an increasing demand for use[1].

The pilot project aims to achieve the following objectives:

• providing sustainable, adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for the hospital’s patients
• expanding the knowledge about eco-sanitation, rainwater harvesting, recycling and latrines maintenance among locals; and
• supporting and strengthening local participation in improving their sanitation[2].

Upon assessing the current condition of the hospital’s sanitation system, it was identified that it is inadequate and in very poor condition. To improve the facility’s conditions and to work towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) related to Good Health and Sanitation, EfOD is fundraising, designing and building a block of seven Eco-San cubicles including a rainwater harvesting system for hand washing and cleansing.

The concept of the Eco-San system relies upon the separation of urine and excreta for separate forms of treatment and use. Beneath each Eco-San cubicle, there is a double vault to store excreta. After a period of dehydration, of around ten months, the excreta can be removed and used as fertiliser. The urine is collected separately and diluted before being used as fertiliser. This process “closes the loop” recovering and recycling nutrients from excreta and urine which are then applied to the soil, providing a sustainable and innovative approach in the hospital for the treatment and use of these types of waste.

[1] EfOD [cited 18/6/2018]. Accessed at: http://www.efod.org.uk/

[2] Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform [cited 20/6/2018]. Accessed at: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs

Eco-San toilets examples built in India

Another EfOD member and I travelled to Kumi for two weeks to manage the start of the Eco-San toilets building’s construction, thanks to the ArchTam’s Blueprint Travel Grant program, which helped towards the travel costs. Over the first few days, we focused on getting to know the local team that we were going to work with, visiting other Eco-San toilets in the area (that are mainly located at schools) and buying construction materials.

The Eco-San toilets building is being built in a sunny spot of the hospital fields, to help towards the dehydration process, with good access and close to the main yards with a footprint of around 13m by 6m.

Eco-San building foundations excavated and poured with concrete including the columns kicker

The following days involved soil digging, concrete mixing, concrete pouring, columns reinforcement and timber formwork building.

It was a very intense experience since we worked quite a lot to make sure we completed everything that we sought out to do. We managed a group of five local men on site, which was challenging at a times due to cultural and language barriers. We managed this through having open discussions together and being confident in our decisions taken while working on site since otherwise, they would do the work their own way. Overall it was a very rewarding, fulfilling and interesting experience; learning with and from them.

EfOD volunteers and local labour team

The construction will continue beyond my trip as other EfOD volunteers will travel to Uganda to continue with the project. The ultimate goal is for Kumi Hospital to have an improved sanitation system, which leads to better hygiene and enables a closed-loop system for the community.

I personally will remain involved in this project and perhaps go back to Uganda towards the end of the construction. One of my takeaways from this trip is how simple we could live and how priorities change based on that lifestyle. Kumi is probably the most remote and extreme place I have ever visited, and people have a very simple life there somehow. My other take away is that we need to change the perspective we have of developing countries, as Uganda. These cultures might still have some fundamental setbacks such as poor sanitation or an unbalanced diet, but I believe the communities should develop in their own way and not in the same way that other nations have evolved.

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