Our first toilets on mainland Tanzania, May / June 2014

For the first time since the foundation of Maisha Zanzibar, we carried out a project on mainland Tanzania. It took place in the village of Jasini, which is located about 100km northwest of Tanga city, the most northern port of Tanzania, close to the border of Kenya. In this village, we built 10 dry toilets.

During the last years, Jasini was afflicted over and over again by typhoid and cholera and many villagers died. The village has neither water nor electricity connections, the roads are very bad and to reach the next hospital takes about 5 hours. Those are the facts which stirred us to start project CHOO (dry toilets) for the first time on the mainland.

The villagers, the village committee and the village's chairperson were very happy and grateful when they learned about our plan. Not only were they grateful, they also offered help as much as possible. For example fabricated the men of Jasini the needed bricks themselves.

Due to the well-founded knowledge of the building technique, our assistant Kingi Banda carried out valuable preliminary work. When Malou arrived at the end of May, all 10 caverns for the toilets were already finished and the superstructures could be started.

Despite the bad road conditions (big rainy season in May) which complicated the material transports, all 10 toilets were finished within four weeks and could be officially handed over to the villagers of Jasini. From adjacent villages new requests for dry toilets reached us already before our return trip.

It was another good an pleasing experience for Maisha Zanzibar and therefore we will contemplate future projects in Tanzania.