earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you,
my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land
where there is no water.
Psalm 63:1
I recently received some e-mails from my friend Roy, a Malawian and the Executive Director of Hygiene Village Project, which partners with Water For People on sanitation and hygiene projects in and around Blantyre, Malawi. I reference Roy in my Malawi Trip Journal... he is on the right in the picture below.
Well, as Roy expresses in the e-mail text, below, a Vacutug would be very beneficial in the areas where Hygiene Village Project is at work. I agree. I see this - specifically, investment in sanitation - as an area where there is a lot of need, but not much focus. You might know that nearly 1 billion people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water. That's a big number - and a big problem. But did you know that access to adequate sanitation facilities is an even bigger problem? Nearly 2.5 billion people in the world do not have adequate sanitation facilities… and overall, nearly 6,000 people die every day from water-related illness. Lack of adequate sanitation plays a huge role in that - what good is clean water if you can't prevent it from becoming polluted? Education about sanitation and construction of latrines and handwashing stations are an important part of the solution... and ongoing training and maintenance is vital.
Roy's e-mail:
We at Hygiene Village Project have been very busy trying to implement a sanitation marketing project. The project has been very tough with a lot of challenges and lessons learnt being the first of its kind in Malawi. However, we have succeeded, as many households have started demanding for the latrines in peri-urban areas.
One of the challenges in our work on the sanitation projects is the sustainability of the programme as more pit latrines are being constructed. Within 3-5 years the latrines shall be filled up. It is our wish that we also introduce the pit emptying technology where the community can be able to empty their latrines at lower costs.
Mark, my request is this: can you support us or can you find any well-wisher (an individual or organization) who can support us by funding for the procurement of a Vacutug. A Vacutug is a mini-machine that is used to empty the sludge from household latrines at low cost. The Vacutug can remove 500 litres of waste from a household in one trip. With agitation the Vacutug can pump the hard compacted waste found in older pit latrines. The provision of the machine will encourage and increase the demand for the latrines in the community. The machine shall also act as an income generation for Hygiene Village Project
The Vacutug is a pit-latrine exhauster designed to provide a simple and inexpensive method for emptying pit-latrines in areas where access by conventional exhausters is impossible, for instance, because of narrow roads. It is a simple machine, composed of a vacuum tank and a pump/tug assembly. The design specification of the Vacutug is based on the hypothesis that, typically, an individual will produce between 40-50 litres of sludge per annum. Thus where dry pits are used with good ground conditions, where there is no ingress of ground water, a 500 litre tank load should provide a latrine service for a family of 10 people for one year.
The tug assembly comprises a small frame-mounted 5.9 kW petrol engine. It is pedestrian controlled and in traction mode, the engine can propel the vehicle at speeds of up to 5kph. It consists of a 500 litre load capacity, a 4 meter long by 3 inch diameter PVC hose and when connected to the vacuum pump which has a 1,700 litres a minute air flow. The pump can be reversed to pressurize the tank to assist the discharge into a transfer tank.
For the Vacutug, we can procure it in Kenya (UN-HABITAT) at a capital cost of $5,100 and we estimate that the total cost which include freight charges, the mounting motorcycle, training, basic maintenance and duty is $17,857.
God should bless the whole process of raising the funds for the procurement.
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