Afghanistan project, 2nd school almost finished
Dry urine diverting toilets installed by 30 families
06.06.2006 |Sascha Gabizon
In 2009 Katachel e.V. discovered that one of the local managers of Katachel Afghanistan had registered some of the associations property (women's soap factory, houses for widows) on his own name. When this became known, and the manager was confronted with this, and asked to re-register this property on the name of the association, this manager went to the press and accused the director Sybille Schneehage of misappropriation of goods or property. This unfounded information was spread by the media worldwide, and has lead to an investigation by the Afghani and German criminal police services. In May 2010, the Afghani authorities re-registered all the property back to the association Katachel. It took many more months, but after not finding any wrong doings with the director of Katachel e.V., the German authorities withdrew all charges on 13 December 2010. WECF is very glad that the problem has been solved and continues to support the work of Katachel.
Second school building with ecosan toilets almost ready
Sybille Schneehage, WECF’s partner, and founder of the NGO Katachel in Afghanistan, has recently returned from a mission to Northern Afghanistan.
Sybille is very pleased that the progress on the 2nd school being build with cooperation of WECF’s TMF programme “tapping resources” (financed by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs), the construction started in April, and already now in the last week of May 2006 the roof is being installed.
The new school has a wonderful new dry urine-diverting toilet-building, the first of it’s kind in Afghanistan. The new toilet rooms have two build-in corners, one holds the Afghan ‘toilet paper’ – lime tones – and the other holds the dry ashes and leaves which are added after using the toilet, to help the composting process of the faecals.
Katachel is in regular contact with the Dutch military representatives in Kunduz, and has invited them to give the opening speech at the festive opening of the school later this year.
30 families installed urine diverting toilets
Now that the first dry urine diverting toilets are operational, 30 families have asked for urine-diversting toilet slaps and have installed new urine-diversting toilets. Sybille Schneehage says “it is as if suddenly the idea has stuck, people see that where with a normal pit-latrine already at 10 meters distance the stench is unbearable, by diverting the urine, the latrines no longer smell”.
It is becoming hugely popular. Among the 30 families are even a few former Taliban families, who generally are very conservative. These 30 families total approximately 300 people. Only a few families are experimenting with the use of urine in agriculture, but most are still hesitant, and have not yet caught on to the idea that in addition to a loss of smell, urine-diverting toilets also produce a valuable fertilizer in the form of urine.
Simple retro-fitting of school pit-latrine is ver successful
Katachel’s local director, Dagdul Delawar has invented a simple but effective way to separate urine from the boy’s school latrines in the school of Katachel village. He installed a funnel in the toilet, asking the boys to target it well, and indeed, after 1 week, the urine separation has resulted in a non-smelling school toilet.
Cooperation with the provincial government and the pedagogical academy
Katachel has singed a cooperation agreement with the provincial government and the pedagogical academy on the further development of urine-diverting toilets for schools in the region. The first common project will be to build 6 dry urine diverting toilets for the women of the pedagogical academy.
WECF, 6 June 2006
