Like a litter box, but for humans...

Aka: Volunteering to build an eco-toilet

So we finally found another organization to do a little volunteering along our travels. As I wrote in one of my recent posts, we have been trying to figure out what the next step should be on this epic journey, so we happened to be lazing around this small ex-fishing village, Taganga, and I saw an advertisement for a local non-profit organization. The organization is called Mission Gaia and it is basically a new non-profit organization that does great things for the local community, it`s children, and the environment. I emailed the director to find out some more information and it turned out that they were in the middle of building an ECO house...and desperately needed some assistance!

Basically, Taganga is a fishing village that has gone bad. It started, I think, as a a stopover for international tourists coming from beautiful Tyrona National Park before they went back to Cartagena and has turned into a development nightmare (like so many places we have seen down here). Really, the major problems here are the lack of potable water and lack of a sewage system. What ends up happening is that someone builds a new hostel/hotel/restaurant for tourists and instead of sewage system they just build a septic tank. Here this basically means a concrete container to store all the waste. These containers are made in typical South American fashion and end up cracking or breaking, then spilling all the contents into the soil. Nasty. Of course, this goes directly into the groundwater, so the groundwater gets contaminated. You get the picture.

The idea was to create a working model house for sustainable growth, development, and construction techniques that the community can use as an example for the future. Basically, when we got there they had already built the house out of adobe and all local products that they found around the area (good idea, but it rained a TON one night and one of the walls started "melting"! oops, guess they got the recipe a bit wrong...). Our task was to make the outhouse, structure and all. We were making an example of a "dry toilet" (Of course this sounds gross. We actually saw one and it didn`t smell at all...check it out online if you`re interested).

The first day we showed up it was total chaos. We arrived and there were no other volunteers (there was supposed to be a team). Nothing was prepared. Or organized. There was no plan. Yeah. Talk about the opposite of how we work. Oh, and how things should work to be effective and efficient. So after spending a few hours debating what the structure should look like, how it should be built, etc. We finally got started. Kind of. Right after starting we found out that the foundation that had been laid a few months ago was already caving in. Great...time to re-lay a new foundation. Now we know how to mix and lay concrete, oh, and place rebar (by hand, of course) in the foundation. Of course, this was going to set back building the structure by a few days. Oh, unless we organized things differently of course.

To make a long story short, as nice as the Director of the organization was, Lisa and I basically took matters into our own hands for a lot of the project. I mean, c`mon, after they explained things to us it really isn`t that hard. Think about it, a 4 ft by 4 ft bathroom structure made out of wood, covered in natural cactus and mud, with a plastic bottle roof. Done.

Anyway, overall we had a good experience helping out, Lisa didn`t cut any fingers off on the jigsaw (her first time), and I got my fill in of hands-on work for a little while. Pics below!

After the local guy poured the concrete.... totally level as you can see!

The 1 bedroom house (we didn`t build this)

Just building the structure... drills are cool

Please don`t fall down

Scott & Alecio with their machetes!

Lisa with an electric saw....scary

Added bonus...the bathroom has a great view of the ocean

Everyone lending a hand :)

The pictures of the final project are TBD. Basically we could`ve finished everything, were it not for a little lack of organization...ha. I guess lesson learned for us. In the end though, I think we did help out a lot, which is all you can ask for!