Bio-centre; remedy to environment ruin in slums
Story by Edwin Koga
Lack of toilets, open sewer, illegal power and water connection, dense population all characterize the slum life.
Umande Trust, a local NGO introduced the bio-gas technology in 2004 to control the flying toilet menace caused by lack of toilets in slums. The technology which started in Kibera has spread to other slums in Nairobi, Kisumu, Nakuru, Eldoret and Nanyuki.
The flying toilet menace created many environmental hazards in these areas, which led to spread of cholera, typhoid and other communicable diseases. Bio-centres have reduced environmental hazards by at least 75% in slums areas according to Umande Trust chief executive officer, Josiah Omotto.
A bio centre has different designs. It can have female and male toilets on each side to even eight on each side depending on the space and money one allocates to one. It can also have a number of bathrooms, dressing room and a kitchen which is always outside the building. The building is also used as gas room.
On it, a first floor can be constructed which can create rooms for office, meeting room which can be used for rentals of hotels and stalls to benefit the community by bringing income to them. It can still further be manipulated to come up with the kinds of resource mobilization or community affairs like libraries, medical centres and halls depending on availability of finance.
Bio-gas in relation to environment brings the community in the slum areas to use the toilets and their human waste fermented in the bio-digester or the dome which is build in the ground and looks like a pot.
The dome is usually sealed container which helps the aerobic bacteria to break down the bio mass resulting from the human waste that lastly yield to fuel gas by the name methane.
After the fermentation the slug is made totally into is useful fertilizer after using the methane gas. As methane is used as heat energy the remaining slug is returned to the land to preserve the soil energy. During fermentation the sewage process is treated making the sludge less harmful to animals and plants.
In an interview with Manyanga Focus, engineer Charles Omondi Oketch, the contractor behind construction of bio gas centres in Nairobi and Nyanza hinted the facility have several benefits to the community. Some of the benefits includes sustainable gas for heat and light energy, sewage treatment and carbon reduction which is friendly to the environment, provision of fertilizer for agriculture, access to toilets and bathroom at low cost, un-necessary use of land space for a lot of more toilets filled every now and then, job creation to the community among others.
Currently Umande has constructed sixty bio-centres in Nairobi slums. Kisumu has nine while Homa bay has one.
The community has managed to operate stalls, hotels that as income generating activities to them, the toilets and bathrooms are also being sold at a fee to help in maintaining the standards of the bio-centre. The project is combination of Water and Sanitation which is being implemented by SECODE and UMANDE TRUST with the help of other implementing partners.