This Project was the Pits!

Dwambazi just got a little holier – as in, holier from all that digging and pitting for latrines!  After 17 months of grant writing, grant pushing and finally grant granting, Mbiwi Village has received 60 glorious pit latrines.  The entire project has been quite an adventure, as you remember from my previous post.  It’s the finale that I have enjoyed the most, though.  Throughout this arduous process, my counterpart, Jembe, has been the backbone.  So many times I wanted to give up, throw in the toilet paper and call it quits.  But Jembe was persistent, hard-working and dedicated; I couldn’t let him down.

We had many unexpected outcomes – both positive and negative. 

The initial builder we hired passed away unexpectedly.   We hired two new builders, but they were immediately terminated when Jembe caught them stealing cement.  The concrete they were mixing was considerably watered-down; the builders were trying to sell the unused cement.  So…as they say, “third time is a charm”…we hired two more builders who were happy to help with this great endeavor, even though the pay was slightly less than they wanted (UNFORTUNATELY the grant only allowed for a certain amount to be used for labor and since the grant was originally submitted, there has been a lot of inflation…FORTUNATELY, we found builders who believed in the cause).  

Since there are many types of san plat designs, these builders were only aware of how to build a specific kind that required more wire rods than the design by our original builder.  We had to use more money than expected on wire rods, which were sold in a town further away, thus requiring us to alter our budget drastically.  Because of the cost, we expected to only complete 45 pit latrines.  It’s a considerable loss and worst of all it was difficult to decide which families, schools or churches were going to make the cut.  We were grateful to find that the primary and secondary schools stepped up.  The school committees came together and adjusted their budgets so that they were able to come up with the funds to pay for their own labor and we supplied them with wires and cement.  Thankfully we were able to complete our goal of 60.

Since I will be leaving Malawi on April 11^th, I felt a lot of pressure to complete these latrines quickly and efficiently.  Luckily, Jembe was a great advocate in making this happen.  He used [innocent] threats, such as, “I will be jailed if these are not completed by the first week of February” and “You will not melt if you work in the rain but I will be jailed if these toilets are not finished” (He liked to use imprisonment as a scare tactic, but to be honest, none of that would have happened.  I think he wanted to be finished with these latrines as badly as I did).  Thus, the work was completed in record time (60 pit latrines in 5 rainy weeks!) due to Jembe’s persistence and enthusiasm.    

After the completion of the pit latrines, the District Health Officer in Nkhotakota was very impressed, saying “this sanitation work is unprecedented.” He wants to make an example out of the work we did in Dwambazi and to promote more sanitation projects in the Nkhotakota district.

So, with a great sigh of relief and a smile upon my face, I can finally say we are finished.  Jembe tells me he is sleeping much better these days and finally has more time to spend with his family (he was working 5am – 9pm every day).  Everyone in the community has been thanking Jembe for his continued hard work in making Dwambazi healthier.  As for me, I am just glad I didn’t give up when the going got tough; this project was definitely worth the extra effort.