On
March 9th, Umande was able to send representatives to the Ngaru Girls High
School in Kerugoya, an all girls boarding school a little over two hours from
Nairobi. The facilities here (a bio-digester 84m3, renovated 20 toilets, biogas
piping and burners) were built last fall and opened for use since November
2016. As one of the several boarding schools utilizing the bio-centers they
were pleased to see the facilities up and running efficiently. Mikayla, our new
intern, and Gladys, our sanitation marketer, were able to tour the property and
meet with two kitchen staff members, Muthi and Mwaii, the school nurse,
Pascaline, and a member of the cleaning staff, Margaret. The Umande Team were impressed
with the overall cleanliness of the toilets and the kitchen and the excellent
conditions the infrastructure installed by the organization were in. Through an
open conversation with the staff members they were able to gather information
on the success and the possible future improvements of the bio-sanitation model.
While Margaret reported initial difficulties with the students using the
toilets correctly, she says after several reminders the girls have been
utilizing the toilets properly with no
issues whatsoever. Muthii and Mwaii both
were overjoyed to report that the biogas has been a tremendous help and now
they are able to cook all the staff meals using it. However, the biogas cannot
yet be used to cook the students’ meals because the biogas burners are not large
enough to thoroughly cook the large cooking pots the students’ food is prepared
in. Despite this, the biogas project (from human waste) has enabled the school
to use less firewood for cooking which helps the environment and decreases
smoke inhalation for the staff as well. Overall, the staffs had little to no
complaints and were grateful for our visit and overall help with the project.
No comments:
Post a Comment