UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

The currency in South Africa is called the South African Rand. On each denomination exists a different animal. The animals on the rand banknotes are called the Big Five and were coined under this term due to the difficulty in hunting them. The Big Five consists of the rhino, elephant, leopard, lion and african buffalo. These can be seen at a game reserve. I was fortunate enough to go to Umfolozi Game Reserve and see the animals in the Big Five. I’ve been told by many that it’s very rare to see a leopard. The landscape in South Africa is one for the books. Durban, South Africa is a coastal city on the eastern side of the country. It’s beautifully located between the beach and the mountains. On my trip, I was able to go to the Drakensberg mountains, where I saw ancient old cave paintings. I was informed that these paintings could be as old as 5,000 years. I was truly in awe with all the beauty that surrounds Durban. It was an amazing experience to be able to visit a beautiful country...

Some obstacles presented themselves during the time I was in South Africa. Unfortunately, the technology I was supposed to test was not working. Many technical difficulties were encountered when trying to operate the viscous heater (VH). The timeframe to get the VH working, was about 6-8 weeks, which by that time I would have already been gone. Instead, I focused on the second part of my project, which was assessing storage conditions of fecal sludge with and without black soldier fly larvae (BSFL). BSFL can be grown on fecal sludge and are currently being used as a source for animal feed because of their high protein content. To evaluate the potential for microbial regrowth in the finished product, storage of the fecal sludge was tested with two different conditions: fecal sludge with BSFL, and fecal sludge without. The fecal sludge without BSFL served as the control. Each container was filled with 500 grams of fecal sludge. 500 BSFL were grown in each designated container with the ...

So, do you? I know I do. I am currently researching at the Pollution Research Group located at the University of Kwazulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, where a team of us work with human poo. Yes, actual human waste. The idea of working with human waste remains a taboo topic today, but it’s one of the biggest global challenges the world is facing. In 2015, 2.4 billion people of the 7.3 billion people on Earth, lacked access to improved sanitation facilities, including 946 million people still practicing open defecation. The two methods of handling human waste are on-site and off-site disposal methods. Local population density often decides which system will be more widely used. On-site systems store and can treat the waste in-situ and are typically used in less populated areas since they are easier and less expensive to manage at small scales. In the case of septic tanks, the waste needs to be transported, once storage is full, to a treatment facility. But how is it being transported...