Latrine Luck

Part of our work as environmental health volunteers is promoting sanitation by education about disease transmission and encouraging the use of latrines. I've been helping my friends Carolyn and Kayla with latrine building projects in their communities. The projects provide interested and dedicated community members with resources to construct latrines for their families. 

The day I returned from hiking around the mountains of the comarca between our sites my latrine building skills were put to the test. My next door neighbor was 2 meters deep in a hole he was digging for a new latrine. He had the materials to build a reinforced concrete platform but told me he wasn't confident in how to set it up and of the concrete mix proportions. It just so happened that I was a latrine building expert after those past few days. To me, this is my ideal work: community members using their own motivation to do projects and drawing on my technical resources. 

We built the platform or plancha and a few days later I used a mold to make a toilet seat or taza for the latrine.  I had some help from a visitor friend. Hopefully I will be able to assist more of my community members in a community wide latrine building project in the next year. 

The plancha, with rebar handles so that when the latrine is full, it can be moved and placed on top of a new hole.

The center and sides of this taza were removed and it was moved on top of the plancha, creating a toilet seat.