Attention: Mr. Bill Bryson, Writing Bloke.

Attention: Mr. Bill Bryson
Living on the Big Island

Dear Sir.

I was heading down to our new loo recently with my well worn copy of A Short History of Everything under my arm. Let me hasten to assure you that the book was for reading and no other purpose. (Please do not feel insulted, I do some of my best reading on the loo)

I am into my fourth read of the book.
I managed to understand at least 80% of what you were explaining in my first read. And then promptly forgot about three quarters of what I had read. I find that the 20% that I can recall doesn’t quite get me though a discussion at a dinner party. (by the way, I am amazed by how few people actually know what percentage of their pillows are made up by dead skin and mites while eating their soup)
I have thus promised myself that I would read your book at least twice this year. Slowly, and with furrowed brow. This should get me up to about a 50% recall, and that sir, should see me through until dessert is served.

Anyway, back to my visit to the loo and my dilemma.
The problem that I experienced had to do with my wife.

On my second visit, to what has turned out to be a very pretty outhouse indeed, I noticed that my book was missing. Needless to say this upset my routine awfully, and something I was really looking forward to, turned out to be a very ordinary experience indeed.
Afterwards, having made a more thorough search, I found the book, pushed down between the box and the wall.
I suspect this was no accident as there is a member of my family who frowns at and looks down upon my reading habits.

I carefully watched my wife’s next visit.
She also carried a book in with her. Careful detective work on my part proved that the book was a Xhosa Speaking course, that we are both meant to be studying.
Yes, in short. Homework.
Now homework is obviously important in anybodies book. But I would as soon take homework to the loo as I would take it to some other pleasant and peaceful event, like a trip to the cinema. It makes no sense.
I am also prepared to admit that there may be an argument for me to learn Xhosa, although one could also discuss the merits of 99,36 percent of the village learning my mother tongue.
Also, my approach to the matter is to combine religion and language, and here I feel that I may be onto something new. I believe that purposely, and purposefully, not making a conscious effort to learn, will free my unconscious mind, which National Geographic tells me is all powerful.
I suspect that this approach, combined with a religious epiphany, will allow me to suddenly begin to understand a foreign indigenous language.
Instantly, and out of the blue.
Anyway. This is my plan. And it is my business.
And my choice of reading matter is also my own business.

However, in the interests of meeting my wife half way, to the crux. Please could you and your publishers consider including an abridged English-Xhosa dictionary at the back of your next print run.
I cannot imagine I am the only one in this predicament.
Who knows, it might even boost sales.

In the meantime, I have removed pages 83 to 127 from our Oxford English-Xhosa dictionary (Flower/intyatyambo to Monday/uMvulo) and pasted them in the back of your book.
This is obviously not ideal, as amongst general aesthetic and practical issues, I lost quite a few words when I trimmed the dictionary pages to be the same size as your paperback.

Even though I am sure my wife will be happy to see that I am making a move in the right direction I feel the only real answer will be getting a move on with the new print run.
Lets shake a leg.

Yours in appreciative reading.

Hamba Gashle

Charles Starling




PS - my son found the journey down, and the general working below, more interesting than the book. So perhaps a couple of pages of drawings to be coloured in, might also be worth considering.

Creating a Composting Toilet: Step 1 - getting the hole right

This is not meant to be rivetting reading, but I promised myself that I would record our loo building and shower building, as it wasn't easy for us to get information when we were looking for it.

So unless you are under pressure to build your own long drop, dunny, out-house, crapper, privy or toilet. You might like to skip along and wait for the next poetic blog about how Skye helped rescue a baby dolphin that had beached itself. Or not.

There are five things you are aiming for, when building a loo:
1. Being Environmentally Friendly
2. Being comfortable
3. Having some privacy
4. No smell
5. No Flies

We came up with a simple model of our own, combining (borrowing and stealing ideas)a little from everything we had read and heard.

To achieve the first three points are easy.
It is the last two, the smell and the flies, that are tricky.

To remove flies and smell, you need to focus on the following:
1. Keeping things as dry as possible (wet poo smells bad, very bad. Dry poo hardly smells at all)
2. Creating a living loo (No chemicals. You want your solids to decompose and get eaten and processed and turned into compost. You want a lot of earthworms and creepy crawlies and microbiological activity. They are your friends. They should make your loo smell alluring, like the sweet woody smell of a forest after the rain)

Our design was simply about digging a hole,as deep as we could without being buried alive
I suspect the kids wouldn't have minded the extra excitement of the old man being buried though.
Sonja, lovelingly gave me the following advice: If it caves in on you keep one hand in front of your face and stick the other up in the air. As I was alone when digging, I presume this was to make finding my body easier.
I can see the thought process - "well, he is under already, and it would save a whole lot of work. Lets just get his hand back under and close it up.

Anyway, back to digging. Once we had got as deep as we could it was then about creating a chamber, or cave at the bottom of the hole, where we would encourage bacterial and microbiological life to flourish.
Into this we would drop our used goods.
To stop the whole thing from caving in, we would create a vertical tunnel up from the chamber to the loo seat, by cutting out their tops and bottoms, and then joining a couple of oil drums to form a tube.

Once everything was filld in, the top drum would stick out the ground slightly, and into the lid of this we would fit a 20 litre plastic bucket (again with no bottom). Around this we would fit a wooden box, with a loo seat. Easy.

Imagine for a minute you are a piece of crap. For some of us this is easier than others. Upon attaining your freedon you would free fall (without touching sides please)through the 20litre bucket, down through the top drum, down through the bottom drum, and gently land on mesh platform about 30 cm from the bottom of the hole, where you would get dried and eaten quickly, and turned into compost. And shat on. Eventaully you would trickle down through or over the platform to the bottom of the chamber, which would itself be lined with a mattress of grass and living microbiological organisms and earthworms and you would be converted into rich soil.

The whole structure is buried, and the only part not covered by earth is the top quarter of the second drum sticking out of the ground.

We will fit a chimney (extraction) pipe into the top drum, (A PVC Guttering downpipe) that we would paint black. This should attract sunlight and then heat the air inside the pipe, which should then rise, carrying out any odours that there may be.

The only vaguely tricky parts were creating a "roof" for the cave that we could fill soil in on top of, and making a mesh screen at the bottom of the drums to catch things (yes, shit) and keep them about 30cm off the ground.

Here is how we did it:




Choose a site with a good view (this is for the comfort part)




Dig a hole about 1m wide and 2 meters long.\




Dig deeper.




Go about 2 meters deep (or until you hit water) Water is bad. It makes things smell. Dry is good.



We hit clay at about 2 meters. We waited overnight and went to look the next morning and we had a small amount of water collecting at the level of the clay. We filled earth in to take us back up above the level of the clay.



We now needed to create the chamber at the bottom of the hole. It needed to be about 30 cm high and needed to remain hollow once we had filled everyting in. After we filled in some earth to above the water level, we then built up some sides at the bottom of the hole to create a ledge to rest the top of the chamber roof on. We used old logs as they were free, environmentally friendly, and already had some microbiological and fungal growth.



On top of this ledge we created a "roof" using some old rusted window frames that we had found. This did the trick perfectly. We now had a sturdy roof support, about 30cm from the floor, strong enough to support the weight of the soil when it was refilled, and strong enough to hold up our tunnel of drums. But with at least 30 cm hollow space to encourage drying and composting. We lined the bottom of this with grass to form a dry mattress.



When all of this was in place we collected a bucket of cow dung that was semi-dry. We made sure to keep all the insects and microscopic growth with it, and then sprinkled this liberally over the grass on the floor.



We even collected and added a whole lot of mushrroms we had found. (We really want that bottom chamber to be alive and active)
I also secretly added a 10g bag of baking yeast.
All good projects need a secret ingredient.



The whole thing was now teeming with life, and there was plenty of room for everything to breathe and compost.



We then put the bottom (rusted steel)drum into place. Then it was a question of placing off cuts of corrugated roofing around the drum to form a roof over the chamber below. We simply overlapped these until we felt we could fill the sand back in the hole and it would not collapse inot the chamber. We then filled the hole with soil. Now we had a steel drum looking down into an empty chamber.
We inserted a platform at the base of the steel drum, with holes small enough to stop most solids, but that would let liquid through if required. We added a whole lot of dung and mushrooms to this as well. This means that most of your solid waste actaully stops about 30cm above ground level. Having air above and below will let things dry out more quickly.



Next we fitted the second drum into the first. We had opted to make this drum a PVC one, as the idea is that we can slip the whole top structure out and re-use it when th hole is full. (Not in my lifetime I hope)
So all we lose is the bottom drum, which is old and rusted and we got for free anyway.



Once the second drum was in and aligned, we filled in with soil all the way to ground level, then we fitted the white bucket, so that I could line up the structure and floor when I fitted it, and last of all we cut a hole for the outlet vent.

Then it was time to move onto the actual structure.

The geko eggs actually hatched

Great excitment from the kids as the eggs we had found and hoped were geko, actually hatched, and actually were, so we had tiny little geko's heading off in all directions. Hopefully they stay clear of the fly paper and don't join the casualties there.



We put a nice piece of driftwood with lots of little hiding holes on it, next to Skyes bed, and released the babies onto that. Of course, they bolted straight over it and dissapeared to groans of "I told you dad..." and "We should have used a jar like I said" etc, etc.

Hope they get on with the new kittens!

Kittens, toilets and school

We will have some blogging to do tonight to catch up on all of our news.

Sonja has started her pre-school. Today is day three and they have about 20 kids attending. Lots to hear here, with many funny and moving stories. She has some awesome pictures as well.
Caleb and Mila attend each morning from 8am to 12.30pm.
Takes them a half hour walk through the village to get to school.

Much more importantly, our toilet is looking beautiful and today I will try and get the roof on so that we can start using it tomorrow morning. Me first, please.
I might run a poll to see which blog is more interesting and fulfilling, Sonja educating and changing lives, or my opus on toilet building.
(with lots of photo's of me risking life and limb down a 2 meter hole in the ground.

We are also slowly developing a routine. We normally are all up by 6am (to beautiful views)Then an hour and a half of chores, dressing and cleaning. At 7.30 am Sonja, Mila and Caleb head off to the pre-school.
Skye and I then start computer work and her home schooling.
Sonja gets back at about 1pm with the kids and then I spend the afternoon doing outside work.

The kids are also dying to post photo's of their two new kittens.
We have one called Tigger, and Mila has called hers Cheetah.
They are reasonably sweet, as far as pets go.
(I am more a farm animal type of person, especially ones that you can milk, get fresh eggs from , or eat)

Stay tuned tomorrow for the school and toilet blog.
Don't feel bad choosing the toilet over the kids.


The donkeys now come inside our bedroom and have to be chased away.
Puma (poo!-Maah!) - means bugger off



We also figured out where all the dog food was going.



Skye looking at a dead fly under the microscope in her classroom on the hill. She has possibly got the best biology teacher in the Southern Hemisphere.



A quick preview of the views our loo will have.




Doing the dishes in the scullery.



Burning our rubbish, another chore.



Explaining to Skye, and having her examine just where the new "time-out" spot will be. None of my kids takes me literally anymore which is a bit annoying. I might have to do a trade in on ones that do.

A peep into what our cottage looks like inside

A very exhausting and fullfilling week-end.
We even got a chance to get up on the roof and repair as many holes as we could find.
We definitely have the worst looking roof in the village.
I suspect that the neighbours are slightly embarrassed by the extent that we are bringing down the neighbourhood aesthetic.
Am pretty upset Sonja didn't get a pic of me up on the roof. I was sure it looked pretty heroic, but for some reason she seemed busy when I called to have my photo taken.
Will now have to pose for it next week (probably with a knife between my teeth)

We have now finished all the furniture we were planning on building.
All that now remains is building an outside porch, putting in a long drop loo, building a solar (jerry can)shower, building a chicken coop, and establishing and fencing an organic vegetable garden.
We will tackle these slowly over the next two weeks.
I will start with the most easy and fun, say, the chicken coop.
Sonja will advocate for the most urgent and back breaking (the loo)
Dammit.

Below are a selection of the fruits of our labour (as opposed to the kids in the pics are the fruits of my loins)



Here I am working at building a water table and a "builders bum".




This has to be one of the most beautiful workshops you could wish for. If it had a level floor it would be an improvment. It is very difficult to get 90 degree corners under these conditions.




Mila agreeing that the new bunk bed is very comfortable.




Skye and Mila dunking biscuits in hot tea.




Caleb taking a break he definitely didn't earn.




A quick semi family picture taken by Skye. Her mother is taking all the mugs to the scullery. Which consists of an outside plastic tub, and a great view.




Mila having one of her spontaneous moments that she is prone to. Have been unable to beat the joy out our of the kids.




Our bedroom. Bit drab with the flash on. By candle light it is much more warm and cosy.




The kitchen area.




The girls beds




Caleb asleep on his new bed.




Our living area looking through into our bedroom.




Our living area looking through into the kids room.




The new bunk in our living area.

Adding to our family home

We had a really productive couple of days since we have been back and have been doing quite a bit around the house.

On Friday I took the bakkie up to collect a delivery of wood and cement that had been delivered for us. It was a two or three kilometer drive in very muddy conditions.

Just as I was about to get started some of the bee keepers called me to please come and help them extract another small batch of honey. We got quite a bit better yield this second time. Partly because our technique has improved, and partly due to these frames having more honey. Took us about an hour, but we got 30 jars out of it, which earned the bee keeper about R660.00. Which is quite good when you think that for many families in the village that represents an entire months income.

Next job was to build and install three bunks. One was a bed for Caleb, and the other two were seats/storage/spare beds in our living area.
We built very simple frames, and used shutterply as front, sides and lids. We put the lids on with hinges to make them easy to open and access storage space inside.
Once we had put on the foam we had cut in East London, and threw on some covers, they were pretty comfortable.

They are really rudimentary, but are a far cry from the plastic storage bins we have had scattered around until now.

Building the frames is a challenge on its own. No power tools allowed and no flat surface to work on. But then our workshop has a pretty good view.
Inside, we have to dig up the mud and dung floor to try and get a semblance of something level. The rest was pretty easy.

We also built ourselves a small kitchen area following the same principle.


We could enjoy the fruits of our labour with a candle lit dinner in our cosy new room. The candle sticks are dried coral we found on the beach that we drilled/chipped holes in for the candles.

Later, when the kids were all in bed and asleep, it was actually quite relaxing to lie back on our very comfortable new seats and enjoy a glass of wine together. There is still lots to do, and I am pretty sure visitors from the city would still be pretty appalled at how basic and grubby things are. Actually visitors from anywhere, would pretty much feel the same way.
But when you have built everything yourself, and started with nothing, and all done everything as a team, then it really does feel like home.

And listening to the rain falling on the roof (gently in the beginning), candles glowing, the sound of the waves coming up the hill, - it really did feel warm and good and cosy.

Just like a family home should.

Now.

Lets get a loo dug.

Should have fixed the roof while we had the chance

Have just woken up after three hours sleep to the rain really bucketing down. We had a half hour storm at about 5pm. As we were in the middle of a massive spring clean and building session it meant dashing around in the storm getting everything weather proof. And we had just lit our outside fire to cook supper.
Cover all the wood with plastic sheeting and baton down. Check
Close up and cover the trailer. Check
Collect all tools and get stored away. Check
Make sure the rainwater tank and storage drums are all set up. Check
Keep the fire going. Check

30 minutes later you are soaked to the skin in your T-shirt and shorts, so you stay outside anyway as it is nice and cool after two very hot days.

As soon as there was a break in the rain I popped onto the roof, Sonja passed me up to pieces of chewing gum, and I managed to plug two of our worst roof leaks.

Then the weather cleared and we had a beautiful evening. We cooked outside and the views after the rain were lovely.



Later, after dinner, the rain started again in earnest.
It was now dark, so we all dashed outside and showered in the rain.
It was enough to get lathered up and rinsed off afterwards.
Great family shower. Except the kids didn't like the cold wind between lathering and rinsing off.

All except Caleb who had collapsed onto his new bed and was fast asleep.

Now midnight and have been fixing some holes with window putty and duct tape from inside.

Really need to get onto the roof tomorrow if the weather clears up.

Maths with shells

Using Skye's growing shell collection to work on her maths skills.

Another casualty

Sadly, we lost another of our household "pets" this past week. Another ghecko found its way onto what it must have thought was heaven - a piece of sticky fly paper brimming with juicy morsels. So close....

Here's the latest addition to our resident donkey family. Very cute!