Improving sanitation in floating communities along the Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia. August 5th - 12th, 2016. By Joanne Wu

Kids playing musical latrines at Wetlands Works’ sanitation awareness event

We’re on a primary school floating on the Tonle Sap Lake. Cambodian pop music is blaring from the speakers.

While the music plays, kids sashay along the perimeter of a circle that’s formed by cardboard cut-outs of squat pans. When the music stops, kids pop a squat.

This game of musical latrines is one of the activities that our sponsor, Wetlands Work, has planned as part of their ongoing effort to educate floating communities along the Tonle Sap Lake about the importance of sanitation and good hygiene practices.

Today (Saturday August 6th) is the event that Wetlands Works has been building up to for over a year. The event is aimed at increasing excitement about the HandyPod sanitation system among residents of the floating communities. Prior to the event Wetlands Work went around to the various communities selling raffle tickets to win a sanitation system that they’ve developed called the HandyPod (see image below).

Wetlands Work’s current HandyPod Sanitation System

At the event a male and female representative from each community is present to report on the winners of the “lucky draw” (raffle). The men sit cross legged in their collared shirts listening intently and taking notes diligently. The women sit in their red and floral printed shirts excited and smiling. I sit there, arms wrapped around my knees, intrigued by how Wetlands Work is leveraging the community’s penchant for gambling to increase excitement about sanitation.

I doubt I would have thought of holding a raffle if I had been asked to plan the sanitation awareness event. But that’s just it: how would I know how to most effectively reach a community that I’m not a part of?

Developing an understanding of the local context that we were designing for served as the impetus for us to travel to Cambodia in the first place. We’ve spent the last 6 months designing and testing our system in the states and we’re here to ensure that we’ve developed something that’s locally appropriate and effective. We’re fully aware that this means we might have to change up our design a bit. Or a lot…

Since arriving, we’ve learned that Wetlands Works independently designed and implemented a system similar to the one we designed over the last 6 months. In response, we have pivoted and are now directing our efforts towards modifying the HandyPod system for use with stilted houses (as opposed to the floating houses that the system is currently designed for).

So it’s back to the drawing board so to speak. Except drawing board = computer aided drawing software. SketchUp to be specific. Sure we’re the most familiar with SolidWorks from our engineering coursework but SolidWorks ain’t cheap and SketchUp is free... so SketchUp it is!

A few YouTube tutorials later, here we are getting feedback from Wetlands Works on our SketchUp designs:

Yao (right) explains one of our designs to Hakley (left) and Puthea (center), two of the engineers at Wetlands Work

Hakley provides input on one of our designs as Puthea and Chandy (right) look on

Hakley, Puthea, and Chandy brainstorming away

We’re heading back out to the floating village to start

building next week! Until then, take care.

- Joanne