finishing the toilet

with one week remaining before we leave muhaka we all want to complete our two ongoing projects, the toilet and the mud hut. we start by completing the doors to measure and fitting them onto the building, only to realise that only one of the doors is the right size.. yaya unfortunately didn't measure each individual door space and given the toilet structure wasn't properly measured out either, we now find ourselves having to saw up and re-construct our carefully made doors. furthermore, once the doors are nailed into place they're too narrow and there are big gaps on either side that need to be filled in and plastered using broken chunks of bricks. it's quite frustrating work but eventually all 4 doors are in place.

some of us start cementing a slanted step around the entire building, scattering gravel and stones for structure and concreting them into place. this is to prevent rain from seeping under the toilet floor and ruining the foundations. joe's mission becomes installing locks on the doors - nailing them into place and hand-drilling holes into the door frame for the bolt to slide into. yaya and chris decide to try and fix the wonky toilet hole by cutting out another one in the middle of the cubicle floor and cementing the useless one closed. we also decide to install a ventilation pipe and cut a hole both in the toilet floor and in the roof to slot it through.

a few people take charge of landscaping - digging, raking and filling in holes to level out and the area around the toilet. then it's time to paint!! the entire building is double coated in white and the bottom half of the building + doors painted blue. the damp door wood soaks up so much paint we keep having to go back over them but eventually the colour holds and we paint the final men/women signs onto the walls. the final touch is scrubbing the cement step free of as much paint as possible and we're done!!

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to step back and look at what we've accomplished since digging the pit 3 long months ago is pretty awesome. what previously was a random patch of dirt is now a functional, freshly painted pit toilet the whole community can use for years to come.. and although it might seem like a small contribution given the poverty in the area, it's definitely something. i'm sure it'll be a little more pleasant for the locals than having to relieve themselves in the bush.

come friday afternoon, the time to officially hand over the completed projects arrives. we all make our way down to the toilet where members of the community have gathered for the ceremony. a local man opens with a muslim prayer and we then exchange a few words: joe speaks on behalf of us all and thanks the locals for the time we've spent in their community, then the local tailor speaks on behalf of muhaka village and thanks us for our work, saying he's very pleased to not have to poop in the bushes any longer (; we all shake hands and the toilet is no longer ours. we then walk down to the mud hut the 1-monthers have been working on (where the puppies have grown so much!!) and a similar ceremony takes place. it's pretty impressive that what started as a bunch of sticks in the ground is now a completed house for a local mama to live in (:

i guess now that it's so close to the end of my stay in camp kenya, it's rewarding to see the product of our hard work.. though there were times i was bored of making bricks for a week straight or mixing concrete or just being at same projects day after day after day, it's payed off in the completion of what we set out to do. i think we were all quite proud of seeing it through til the end and it's cool to think that for the rest of my life i'll know there's kenyan kids in the tiny village that is muhaka using a pit toilet i dug and built when i was 18 (with bricks bearing the names of my friends and family!!) (: