Burkina Faso

I was just in Burkina Faso for work. I took my pink messenger bag that I used the last time I was in the country seven years ago (before this blog)!

Two weeks of clothes, field gear and (of course) cleats (for a tournament I went to straight from the airport when I got back to Europe).

We spent a few days in Ouagadougo meeting with government and international development actors and stakeholders. There were also other folks from the institute (past and present) around town, which was neat. Then the team headed to a town a few hours away from the capital, which is known for being the place that the buses stop between Burkina's two largest cities. We used it as a base for accessing the other towns and villages that are part of the project.

Checking out a brand new, never been used, ventilated double pit latrine.

I have over 600 photos from the trip - mostly of toilets and their buildings, but also of residences, water and waste systems, interviews, and workshops. I'll spare you the bulk of them. This was a challenging, but rewarding trip (+ no one I was with got malaria this time!): everything was in French, and it was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit every day, but I think we got solid data and a great grasp of the project elements we were studying.

One of the interviews was with the proprietor of a dolo (millet beer) home-brewery/bar. I didn't see any bottles of StarSan, but the women did comment that things were much cleaner since they had a sink basin installed through the program we were evaluating. 

There was no official work on Sunday, so my colleague and I tried to take advantage of the nearby Deux Bales National Park. With hopes of  catching a glimpse of elephants or hippos, we set off after lunch to meet our guide. We did spot some illegal cattle, some flowers, a few birds, lots of termite mounds and something very large in the antelope family running away.

An elephant had been there in the recent past - the guide guessed the day before we were there.

Cool trashcan. The bin is hinged, so the waste can be easily tipped out, but can be covered from rain and some vectors. These were fairly common in the town, but had JICA logos on them. The waste was collected by donkey driven carts, but unfortunately I could not get a photo - I did take a video of what might have been a transfer station, but have not gone through the movies yet.

The coolest paint job of the houses we visited.

A newly built EcoSan toilet. You squat with your rear over the big hole, peeing into the center hexagon, which drains through a hole in one of the corners. This allows the liquids and "solids" to be separated - meaning less smell, theoretically easier hygieneization, and the potential for nutrient recovery.

Haiti

I was in Haiti in April to help run an innovation workshop for a sanitation NGO and look at their operations in two Haitian cities. To learn more you will just have to wait for my dissertation to come out in a few years.

Post-its and ideas galore!

Poop-compost with an ocean view.
To get to this site, we drove through the city dump - basically a DREAM COME TRUE!
(not the way the dump worked, but seeing it first hand)

They are doing some experiments to determine what sort of benefits
come from using their soil additive. 

After all that intense learning and research, there was time for a day at the beach. A thirty minute moto ride from the city where I was staying + another 20 on a boat landed my friends and I on a picturesque beach. As we approached the shore, several fishermen paddled up in kayaks with their catch, which we could then have cooked on the beach. My friends had been there before several times and knew one of the cooks, so they had him negotiate with the fishermen for us. There was time for relaxing on the shore, volleyball, and  snorkeling. I saw coral and so many fish! I had sort of given up on finding a time to go scuba diving, but now I am resolved to make it happen.

Type of boat that took us the last stretch.

Yum :)

My list of sea-life that I saw. I will try to match up the descriptions to images later.
(My google search for "fish that look like pickles" yielded no useful results.)

The beach itself was kind of strange. For the past few years, Haiti has been added as a stop on one of the big cruise lines (rumor has it that they just tell passengers that they are going to Hispaniola Island). Basically the passengers have to stay in an enclosed area with a water slide, zip-line, jet skis and inflatables, but can pay extra to be taken to the nice beach where we hung out. They let non-cruise people go there on days when there is no cruise ship.

You an see the the huge water slide in the cruise stop area.

With a productive workshop, interesting field visits, and a surreal beach experience under my belt, I flew back to the US for some quality family time.

Window seat!