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Botswana: Money Down the Drain
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The Voice (Francistown)
COLUMN
31 July 2007
Posted to the web 31 July 2007
I went to Borolong last Sunday to look at toilets. NO kidding, that's what I did. The experience was interesting and enlightening but also a bit depressing.
It was interesting to find out how the local residents who had been chosen for the government study felt about the environmentally friendly non-flushing toilets they had been using for the past three years.
All the members of the trial that I spoke to indicated they were thrilled they didn't have to haul water from distant standpipes - up to four kilometres away - to flush their loos, and they thought it was great they could use the odourless liquid that came out the other end of the system to water their vegetable gardens.
The trip was enlightening because I travelled with the management team from Gendarme Sanitation Systems. Owner John Hunter-Hardy and his second-in-command Gardson Mazonde are fountains of information on the hazards of pit latrines and flushing toilets.
Did you know pit latrines have polluted the water in most of the aquifers in eastern Botswana and that they are responsible for the contamination of drinking water all over the continent? And did you know that the average toilet in our country uses 10 litres of drinking quality water for every flush?
For the past seven years, Hunter-Hardy has been promoting the use of anaerobic poop-processors that work like second stomachs to completely breakdown human waste so they can help preserve some of our precious drinking water.
The former manager of a large South African TB hospital says he believes dwindling supplies of clean water are going to present the main challenges to governments and aid agencies around the world in coming years- and I agree with him.
That's why in addition to the non-flush toilets, the Gendarme team are also encouraging the construction and use of simple sand filters to purify wash-water so it can be used again for cleaning dishes or for watering the garden.
The first depressing part of the journey came when I learned one of the main benefits for the women in the trial was that they felt much safer now that they didn't have to venture out to the long-drops in the middle of the night.
Evidently it is fairly common for women and young girls to be attacked and raped right outside their homes when they go out at night - and the violations are rarely reported.
The other depressing point was the lack of progress Hunter-Hardy and Mazonde have made in getting their water saving toilets accepted for government use.
Construction companies and other private firms have raved about the savings they have seen in their water bills, but schools and other public institutions are still being built with flush toilets in areas with limited water supplies.
Why?
The Gendarme boss admitted people are generally resistant to change and they are used to flushing toilets, but he said there was also a more sinister reason.
He didn't mention any names, but he said one Gaborone based architect told him he loved the anaerobic toilets but he would never recommend them in one of his projects because he wanted a new Mercedes.
You see, the non-flushing toilets cost much less to install than normal loos and the consultants usually get about 10 percent of the projects they draw up.
Water Worries
• Water Utilities estimates there are 59,000 flush toilets in Botswana.
• There are two adults and three children in the average household.
• The average flush uses 10 litres of water.
• Assuming two flushes per day per person - which is a very low estimate - each household turns 100 litres of drinking water into sewage each day.
• That adds up to 36,500 litres per household each year.
• At that rate, Botswana residents turn 2,157,442,000 litres of drinking water into sewage each year.
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• Gaborone Dam holds 141,400,000,000 litres...when it is full.
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