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!

Vietnam

My time in Vietnam was split between work and play. I was able to spend time in Hanoi, Hai Phong, and Ninh Binh province. I was there for the third international fecal sludge management conference. You might chuckle, but there were over 500 participants! Sanitation is becoming a hot topic - we even have our own Sesame Street character!

I got a lot out of the conference because it is mostly focused on what happens after you use the toilet, whereas the other conferences I have been to concentrate on water and getting people to use toilets with little attention paid to what happens next. Don't get me wrong: getting a toilet built and actually used is difficult, but the whole sanitation chain must be considered. This is one of my fears concerning India's 100+ million toilet goal.

You probably aren't here to read my opinions on poo policy, so here are some glimpses into the rest of my time in Vietnam (more photos here):

Luckily, someone on sabbatical at work has lived in Vietnam, so he took us to a great restaurant and ordered up a feast that included morning glory (garlicky "water spinach"), fried tofu, salad, some buns, plus seafood hotpot and:

... fermented sausage (wrapped in like a banana leaf or something).

Before the conference I went to the Ho Chi Minh museum. This photo is from the part where it is supposed to be like you are walking through his brain. Admittedly, I didn't know much about this part of history or the world so it was difficult to know what to trust. There was one really trippy part where a video was shown in which the Challenger explosion morphs into a nuclear mushroom cloud.

nice mosaic-y lotus fountain

Super coffee drinks. This one is iced condensed milk and coconut milk with coffee on top.

After the official conference was over, there was a day of workshops. During the session on resource recovery I was pretty much convinced that worm farming is the future. Luckily, I should be writing a case study on a growing worm concern later this year. The following day was for field trips. I went to a sewage composting plant in Hai Phong.  

You should have seen  those sanitation researchers sprint to check out this vacuum truck.
It is my understanding that the sludge stays in these stabilization ponds before it is moved to windrows for composting.

After the field trip, I headed to Tam Coc province with a co-worker. This is an area about two hours away from Hanoi that is known for some cool rock formations.  

We took the train

first class or "soft seats" there were also TVs and a ticket checker, who fell asleep and snored incredibly the whole trip.

Vietnamese-style coffee. The silver disc acts as a filter. Vietnam produces quite a bit of coffee, but it is used mostly to make instant coffee. I really enjoyed the vanilla aroma of the coffee. I brought some beans and two of these filter contraptions back to Switzerland and am looking forward to trying them out.

The thing most people do when they come to this area is the three caves boat trip. Basically, water flows under some of the rock formations and you can have someone from the boat-guide association row you to all of them. Our guide rowed most of the way with her feet.

I'm usually really good with boats. This one was near impossible to steer or propel.
It took some convincing for her to let me try with the real oars. There were some token paddle for the tourists, but they were flimsy tin attached to about two feet of wood. 

 I think the boat trip went on for a bit too long. It was pretty far and you can really just sit there enjoying the scenery and making awkward faces at the other tourists who are on their way back. One cave probably would have been enough, but the most impressive one was the last one. The hotel had free loaner bikes, so we explored the area for the rest of the afternoon. They were very helpful and provided a map with some points of interest.  It was so nice to be back on a bike (freedom!) and out of the hectic city. I got the hang of it eventually, but crossing the street in Hanoi usually felt like a bit of a gamble. Plus the air quality in town is rather poor.

That is a goat on an almost vertical rock face. I bought a similar (okay much clearer) postcard at the natural history museum in London a few years back when pops and I were there for soccer watching

Click the above photo for a 360+ degree view.

The karst landscape almost masks the encroaching industry. 

The next day, we went to Cuc Phuong National Park, which is a rain forest. The park opened during the war and was so important to Ho Chi Min that he took time away from leading the army to attend the ribbon cutting.  You can get a sense of what it was like to be in the forest here.

The trash receptacles were carefully molded/sculpted to look like stumps. 

Conservation sign. I did not see any tigers or monkeys.

This was pretty much the only wildlife I saw. There were lots of bird noises.

The park is know for its allegedly 1000 year old tree, but this other (younger) tree was much more interesting. 

The park also has a turtle and primate rehabilitation centers, which I did not visit, because I was fairly certain it would just make me sad. I did go by the gift shop of the monkey center, because all the others were closed and it actually seemed pretty legit. The next day there was time for a smidge more sightseeing before heading back to the city. 

So hip.

Obligatory Southeast Asia rice paddy photo. For a photosphere that includes a boatload of stairs that lead to some sort of temple click here.

The best fried tofu of the trip. So fluffy. With a nice, slightly grainy, chili sauce for dipping and surprise herbs/leaves.  

On the way back we rode second class or "hard seats"

The second class windows were just grates, not glass.

Once back in Hanoi I stayed at a hotel with ants and spent my last day at the Hoa Lo prison and catching up on work while drinking more of those delicious coffee concoctions - one even had rice in it, before flying to the Philippines.

In the international departures terminal in Hanoi-
Watch out capitalism is on its way!