Visiting an Actual Loo Factory!!

I contacted Wicus at Cemforce, and explained what I'd been up to since I arrived in South Africa. He very kindly invited me down to Kimberley to check out the factory and see what he’s been up to.
I was pretty excited at this point :-) If Esibayeni could partner with a company that were already producing loos, then it might be possible for them to get someone experienced to assist Esibayeni with setting up a factory, reducing the risk associated with setting up the factory.
This would be quite a nice way for me to end my placement, since I am returning to the UK in a few weeks, and after visiting the factory Esibayeni would be in a good position to decide either carry the project forward in a big way, or see the factory and decide that its too much to take on.
So... I asked Andre, who helps run Esibayeni, and he agreed to come down to see the factory! Hurrah!

The drive to Kimbeley, in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, took 11 hous each way (and Andre insisted on driving the whole way, he must be mad!) Anyway as well as the glamorous claim to being home to a prefab latrine factory, Kimberley is the birthplace of the De Beers Diamond mining company, which was started up by Cecil Rhodes and his cronies. There are lots of Diamond mines in Kimberley, including the Big Hole, which is completely hand-dug until it closed in 1914 and is absolutely massive...I'll save you the stats :-)

Cemforce. Our New Best Friend!

Dave Still, who works for Partners In Development, a South African Engineering firm who reached me through the sanitation online forum ecosan put me in touch with Wicus at a company in Kimberley known as Cemforce, as they were producing prefabricated loos doing something similar to what we were aiming for. Cemforce had started off with housing, moved into latrine production, and had recently gone back into housing, with 5 prototype houses using the same panels used for the toilets.

This all sounded pretty familiar! I was originally sent by EWB-UK to South Africa to work with an NGO called Esibayeni on a low-cost housing project. When I arrived I found that the project was still just on paper. Since we were starting from scratch, I thought that it would be a good idea to concentrate on trying to build latrines first, which would be much easier, and give us some experience of the manufacturing a construction material before moving onto housing. I was pretty encouraged by the fact that Cemforce had gone along the same lines.

SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!

Over the past couple of months, poor Gareth has been having to cough up some of his own money to buy bits and pieces to continue the development work :-( sniff...
So I said to Esibayeni (the organisation I’m working for). “I’ve got no money, you’ve got no money. We need money”.
And so they got on the phone and wrote a funding proposal to a South African Investment Fund and the World Bank for a seed grant so that we have enough money to get the project to the point where we can build a prototype. Anyway, the South African guys seem keen and are sending someone to interview us, so fingers crossed! This would mean we have enough money for supplies and equipment, and enough to pay for me to stay until the end of March. Great!

Engineers Without Borders Blogs

I've been sent to South Africa as a volunteer with Engineers Without Borders-UK (EWB-UK) and I've just stumbled on some more EWB volunteer blogs which you might be interested in...
Building Wind Turbines in the Philippines
You've gotta check this one out cos he's working with SIBAT, who I voluntered with as a VSO volunteer 2 years ago - There's even a photo of the first wind turbine that I helped to build and paint!
Havana Water Project
Eco-Sanitation in India
Working with Farmers in Zambia
This one is a bit old though.
Working with Farmers in Ghana
A token EWB-USA blog
From Womens Development to pasteurising tomatoes!
A couple of blogs from EWB-Canada
A US Peace Corps Volunteer setting up a computer centre in Togo

A Word From My Sponsors

For those of you wondering, "how come Gareth gets to go to South Africa and make toilets when I have to do a proper job.." I thought a few words about how I came to be out here would be handy.

I was sent here by the NGO Engineers Without Borders-UK (EWB-UK), who, in collaboration with Marie Zanders of the Engineering Firm Buro Happold, arranged for 2 volunteers to come to South Africa for 6 months to work with an NGO/development consultancy known as Esibayeni. With the assistance of the Bath branch of EWB-UK (this ones a shout out for you Mr Whitworth!) I had to raise money for my living expenses, whilst the local council here in Jozini offered to provide accomodation and a car if we helped them with some of their Engineering-type stuff.

So, these are the guys that coughed up the money to keep me fed here in Jozini!

• The Happold Trust (a charitable trust closely linked to Buro Happold)
• The University of Bath Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering
• Richard Paice at the ISA charity
• The Royal Commonwealth Society

So thank you to all of them!!!

Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away..

Ok, so my mate Steve has got a cool blog about his 'soil-based fun' so I thought that I might give it a shot too! For those who don't know me, I'm a Civil Engineering gradute from Bath, UK and I'm volunteering with Engineers Without Borders-UK in the wonderful town of Jozini, in Kwa Zulu Natal, in South Africa.

I'm working on a loo-building project at the moment; in the area in which I live the South African government has a backlog of 85,000 outdoor toilets which it wants to build for people who currently don't have one.

The problem (as I see it) is that they can't be build the things fast enough. The government hires builders to build the loos out of concrete blocks and they are of a pretty bad standard, and take too long to put up make. The builders don't make much money out of them, which may explain why a lot of them are of a pretty shabby quality.

So... For the past 6 weeks or so I've been working on a design which uses a plastic fibre mesh-reinforced concrete panels (Textile Concrete) for the walls, roof and pit-lining and a dome-shaped slab (which I found on a website about low cost sanitation) to go over the pit.

Anyway, I just thought I'd write this as a record of how it all goes!