World Environment Day
Somewhere in North Karnataka there is this taluk town called Bilgram. The town grew around an army cantonment during the British times more than hundred years ago. So it has tree lined streets, bungalows with garden having old trees. There is an ‘Institute’ area where there was once a club and a theatre which showed foreign movies and had even a bar. Near it there is a market where you can buy everything. There are many old churches, mosques and temples. They speak Kannada, Marathi, Dakhni, Konkani and English.
The town has an environmental group called Prakruti. Nora Caravallho is the secretary and is the heart and soul of it. Beside her in the group there is a naturalist, an animal lover, a photographer, a doctor, a trade unionist and a journalist. Prakruti does several things. They have environment education programmes in school and help running eco clubs in school. In the town they have an anti plastic bag campaign and a roof top rain water harvesting programme.
They have good links with the surrounding villages. They have adopted a few villages which have been involved in organic farming through some old Gandhians. The rural programme of these Gandhians also had some tank restoration programmes, planting trees etc. Prakruti buys all the surplus of the adopted villages and it is distributed among the members of the group and friends. Apart from grains etc. Prakruti also buys value added products like Ragi malt, chutneys and pickles which a village group produces.
On the World Environment Day they had a whole day programme. It was organised in the Kala Bhavan - the District Theatre building. Outside in the grounds there was a shamiana and it had a photo exhibition and stalls. The photo exhibitions had mainly enlarged photographs of nature taken by Murali, the photographer of the Prakruti group. There were also some photographs villagers harvesting millets and making pickles and ragi malt. There were stalls that sold organic grains, there were others that sold organic ragi malt, pickles etc. Food shops sold organic millet based food and one stall gave meat curries with organic food. There was bookshop which sold books on organic farming and children’s books on environment and wildlife.
Inside the hall inaugural songs, lectures etc. went on. They also had a carbon foot print workshop conducted by Katyayani, Chandirka and Lavanya from Apis Foundation, Hyderabad. These three young women were dressed for the occasion and every body’s eyes were upon them. Katyayani was in pink shoes, tight black pants and a canary yellow top with wide collars. Chandrika was in riding breaches with a white embroidered top. Lavanya was in a wide big black skirt and a pink top and sandals. They were fluttering about like butterflies and buzzing like honey bees.
Before closing Nora said, ‘among the guest today we have our friends from the villages who have been providing us organic food. I would ask Shree Keshav to give us a feed back and tell us what we city people can give to the villages’
Keshav said, ‘I am grateful to Nora Akka for inviting me. I am very happy to be here among all you city folks. I have spent the whole day very happily watching all these clean and bright young people who are so concerned about the environment and village people.’
‘I am very happy to see that our organic products are so popular among you. I heard about fair trade and that you people want to pay us good prices for our healthy organic products. Well that is nice. We can provide you as much organic products as you like.’
‘Nora Akka asked me what the city people can give to help the villagers.’
‘Today I looked around and tried to find what I can take it back from here. I found there is nothing. I began thinking what you people have that we may take. I find that you have something which is very valuable to us – almost as valuable as gold if not more. I am referring to what your school children call number one and number two (laughter). Why don’t you send it to us? It is more valuable than the money that you promise as fair trade.’
‘These bright young women from Hyderabad can tell us how many thousand litres of urine (piss) and how many tons of human excreta (shit) you people produce every day. Our village has only thousand people whereas you have a hundred thousand people. So you people produce a hundred times more this valuable source of fertiliser. But you city people do not recognise it. Almost all of it is wasted and goes down expensive drains to pollute rivers and lakes and surrounding regions.’
‘I also noticed that in the city you people burn leaf fall in the gardens. Then there is a lot of biodegradable waste that is put in plastic bags and allowed to rot. Now all that you have to do is to mix this biomass and your shit and piss and turn it into first class manure. Can you do it? This is the only thing that you city people can give to us villagers in return for the food we produce for you. Thank you.’
The Humanure Project
Nora was very upset by Keshav’s remarks on the World Environment Day in Bilgram. She could not blame him for it because what he said was quite true. Nor could she ignore it.
Nora called a meeting of tow young people Eva and Raju who had done a project on solid waste management in their school. They told her that the solution lies in collecting urine and diluting it 20 times. Then it can be directly used on plants. In making the shit available, the answer lies in composting it. They also added that urban middle class houses are connected with a drain and they will not change to composting latrines or collecting the urine. They said we have to go to the poor people who do not have latrines. Nora was acutely aware that once again the middle class does the awareness building whereas when we have to actually change the world we have to go to poor people.
They chose Kabir Nagar, the power loom weavers colony where they have been demanding latrines from the municipality. The contacted the municipality and got permission to build latrines in the city garden next to the colony.
The garden was in a bad shape. Its boundary wall was broken at places, goats and cows were grazing on what little grass that was left and people were using the ground as open latrines. Eva and Raju started with children’s festival and organised games and activities. They also started a mobile library where children exchanged books on a weekly basis. Then they started a children’s eco club and explained their plan to build ecological latrines and urinals. They made work groups with children and began to start the work of sanitation step by step.
First they began to repair the wall and get the water connection to the garden restored. Slowly they began to plan the garden. They marked out areas for building the compost heaps, the nurseries and vegetable plots. There were old trees in the garden and had a lot of leaf fall. In the area marked for compost heaps they started collecting leaf fall. They brought seeds and planted some directly and some in nursery bags and watered them.
Then they constructed the urinals in such a way that all the urine was collected. Everybody who used the urinals was paid by a yellow plastic token that could be exchanged in a shop for 10 paise that sold sweets and school stationery. Initially some children even cheated by making frequent unproductive trips to the urinals. But soon other children reported and it was discussed and gradually it stopped.
They diluted the urine 20 times and began to sprinkle it on the plants and on the leaf fall. They also began to collect all the dog shit and even human shit after covering them with dust and leaf. This also they put in the leaf heap.
The next step was the difficult one. They consulted old latrine workers and Gandhians who knew the whole field of community latrines. The problem was that they wanted to make a humanure dry latrine where only a little water was used for washing and not for draining the shit out. The idea was to collect it in a bucket, cover it with dry leaf powder and transport it to the compost heap. Now a whole generation has gone through abolishing such a system in the name of removing untouchability. To reintroduce the system with all the precaution and good science was difficult socially.
So they first built only 4 latrines, two each for men and women. Within each set of two latrines, one was built with a seat for elderly people who found it difficult to squat. They bought 8 buckets, painted them white and fixed wooden handles on them. Each user was paid with a brown plastic token which could be exchanged in the shop for 25 paise.
Once again initially children used it. Then the elderly and women came. In the latrine there was pictorial instruction to put a handful of crushed leaf after the job was done from the wooden trough that was kept there. Since so little water was used the place was dry and clean. There was no smell because it was covered with crushed leaf.
The next part was the real difficult part. They had to remove the bucket, replace it with fresh one, put all the 4 buckets in a small trolley, carry it to the compost heap, remove a bit of compost from the centre and empty the bucket into it. Actually it was quite simple, but initially everyone was hesitant to handle shit. It was Nora, Eva and Raju who themselves took the initiative and did it. After emptying it was covered with more leaf and other biomass. Finally the bucket was washed and the water was sprinkled over the compost heap.
Soon people got used to this extra clean toilet without water and every one began to use it. Two persons (one man and one woman) were employed to empty the buckets and sweep the toilets regularly. After some time they built another unit of 4 latrines and one unit was exclusively for women and one was for men.
Meanwhile the compost heap was growing in numbers and after the first three months they began to ‘harvest’ one heap a weak. At the end of the year the team and some children hired a small truck, loaded it with the compost and went to Keshav village. They were given a warm welcome and a feast was organised for them. They came back with a truck load of fruits, grains, vegetables and fresh eggs. They opened an organic shop in the garden and sold them.
Reading Aloud and Ping! Goes the plastic
The Humanure Project at Kabir Nagar Public Garden succeeded in many ways. The organic shop in the garden was stabilised and was run by the Makkala Sangha – the Children’s Association. The system of yellow and brown tokens stopped as people realised the value of a clean toilet. In fact outside visitors paid for the use of it.
The Prakruti group members began to visit regularly and spread the word about humanure toilets. Soon some people who had large gardens and were facing the problem of providing toilet for their servants approached. They were asked to send their servants to study the system and if they liked it then the servants themselves should build it and run it. The house owner of course had to provide the money for it. The senior members of the Makkala Sangha took up the contract and earned Rs. 1000 per humanure toilet.
The children’s library had acquired nearly 3000 titles because one of the Prakruti members was a retired librarian and helped acquire the books. The books were acquired by starting a bookshop run by the children. The Library and the bookshop both were called Makkala Sahitya Bhandar (MSB). This enabled them to get discounts and they also sold a few books every day during the library hour. A children’s cultural centre came called Makkala Mane. This had one large hall which contained the books in shelves and surrounded by a covered space.
Eva and Raju often dropped in during the library hour and discussed various environment issues. The issue of urban food waste wrapped in plastic carry bags was often discussed. In Kabir Nagar itself children managed to stop the practice in a big way but in the town shopkeepers complained the people demanded carry bags. Only in medical shops they started using small brown paper bags. Raju got the idea of making these bags with old news papers. MSB produced some samples of 4’’*6” size and the medical shops said that they will pay Rs.10 for 100 bags. Within a couple of weeks many children were producing 100 bags in an hour and half and got paid Rs.8 for it by MSB. One day Eva suggested making the bags at Makkala Mane in a group. Some 7 children came and they produced 1000 bags in a little above an hour. All this was done chatting, getting up and coming back etc. Everybody was paid Rs.10 and MSB kept Rs.30 for future use. One day Eva read a story to them while they were making the bags. Soon these read aloud session became regular. Then the senior members suggested that the person reading should also be paid RS.10 since they were saving Rs.30. On days Eva did not come some child would read or some time even just sing. They began to read everything that came, story books, newspapers, booklets and pamphlets on environment, corruption, on Save the Deccan and so on.
One day Nora, the secretary of Prakruti, came by and listened to the read aloud sessions. As the read aloud session went on droning, her mind wandered. She dreamt of plastic bags fly about lazily and the paper bags following them and ping! The plastic bag would vanish!
Enter the Grandma
Soon the group ran out reading material. They tried out performances by children but it did not work. Then one child, Rahmet said that his grandmother can tell nice stories in Dakhni. So they called her and she told so many funny stories with strong Dakhni flavour that children had to hold their stomach for laughing. Reshma chachi was also pleased with her earnings of Rs. 10 per session. No one had ever paid her for telling stories!
It was not long before they found story tellers in Kannada and Marathi. All the children knew all the three languages and they had a great variety. Nora started recording these stories with the idea of transcribing them.
One day a wandering ventriloquist came and he was so talented! He could imitate dogs fighting, cock fighting, baby crying - anything you ask, he would perform immediately. He was very poor and in rags. The children decided to pay him double their rate, that is, they paid him Rs.20!
The Dog Department
Katyayani and Chandrika from Hyderabad heard about all these activities of Makkal Mane and decided to pay a visit. They walked in the Kabir Nagar Public Park and immediately several dogs surrounded them barking furiously at them. Nora, Eva, Raju and the children got a bit alarmed thinking that their guests would be frightened. But both of them were completely at ease and started talking and scolding the dogs.
Both of them moved to the Neem tree around which a platform was built. They sat on it and Katyayani brought out a pendant from her bag. She identified the top dog, called him Sheru and began to move the pendant slowly. Sheru got hypnotised and sat down on his haunches. Other dogs followed suit and sat down in a semi circle around Katyayani, very quiet and expectant.
Katyayani told the dogs about her first dog, a pup that was kicked very hard by a cruel man. She brought it home. Then she told them all the stories of various dogs she had ending up with her current dog Noty. In the end she brought a pack of biscuit and gave one to each of the dog and told them to go and play. The dogs happily scampered away.
But where was Chandrika? She was under another tree surrounded by cats and telling them her story about the 70 cats that were born in her house. She ended up telling the story of Fanta and Pepsi, two of her cats. ‘Once Fanta's sister Pepsi was tied up in a sack by my neighbour and abandoned in a neighbouring town. Imagine our surprise when it showed up at our door a few days later all wretched and howly! It was a heartening moment. Pepsi was a playful mischievous cat while Fanta was the sober motherly one.’ She also told them about Pepsi and its crazy games. She got up and the cats were around her legs, rubbing themselves and tumbling all over. With an effort she shooed them away.
The guests finally entered the Makkal Mane Room and had a nice long chat. The children were very curious about their ability to relate with cats and dogs. They explained that the can make friends with any dog and cat because they have loved them since their childhood and had several dogs and cats as pets in their life. They explained that why should love them and have them as friends and pets. The cats and dogs are domestic animals, like cows, buffaloes, horses and donkeys. Humans have separated them from their wild life origin thousands of years ago. Now they cannot survive without human help. So we cannot leave them on their own. If we do they will be starving and ill. There is also a danger that their illness can make us ill. So it is our duty to take care of them. If we cannot, or if they become too old or ill than we should kill them.
They also told the children to adopt a dog in their street. Then they will all have a friend and the dogs will be well fed and healthy. Of course if they are too ill we may have to treat them or kill them.
Then some children told they already have a dog and it is great to have a dog. Then Eva talked about her dog and suggested that every member of Makkala Mane should have a dog. Everybody agreed. Some were afraid of dogs but others told them once you have your dog you won’t be afraid. Nora said that she will arrange with Dr. Barpute, a dog doctor to have all the dogs examined and made safe.
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