CASE STUDY- FLY CATCHER
Based on our experiences in rural Sierra Leone, GOALIreland and UNICEF share the same belief that Community Led Total Sanitation is one of the most effective and sustainable methods of ensuring sanitation intervention reach the whole community.
By January 2009 GOAL had‘triggered’ the CLTS process in 107 communities in Gorama Mende chiefdom situated in the North East of Kenema District. The CLTS monitoring and assessment team set up in the Chiefdom over couple of months have verified and declared 42 communities open defecation free (ODF) in just a six months period.
The sanitation awareness awoken in the minds of triggered and ODF communities in GoramaMende have over months posed serious thinking for Community Mobilizers working with these communities in trying to find a sustainable solution to the problem of flies in latrines, drawn by the smell and spreading disease.This concernwas raised by community members who asked GOAL for chemical insect killers to control the amount of flies in their latrines.
The Mobilizers were motivated to find a sustainable solution to the above problem, and advised the community people to keep their latrine clean and ensured it is tightly covered after use as this will help reduce the amount of flies in the latrines. After few months, the Moblizers in their usual monitoring drive of all triggered and ODF communities were again faced with the same problem of flies in some latrines even when these latrines were confirmed by the Mobilizers asbeing covered and kept clean.
Reaching a sustainable solution to this problem posed a serious task for the Mobilizers and led to the development of research into low technology solutions. This resulted in the introduction of FLY CATCHERS in those communities that had been requesting chemical insect killers.
COMMUNITY MOBILISER EXPLAINS HOW TO MAKE FLY CATCHER
Samuel Pyne his demonstration explanation as seen in picture below on how to make fly catcher said “the fly catcher can be made out of an empty 1.5litre plastic water rubberas commonly called ‘tutick rubber’ in our local dialect krio.Cut the empty rubber from top, and insert it upside-down into the bottom part of the same rubber. Add anything into it rubber which you think it odour can easilyattract flies and hang itin your latrine, after a few days you will notice numbers of flies trapped inside. You can always empty the rubber into the same latrine pit refill and hang it again” he concluded.
Samuel Pyne making (left) and installing (right) a fly catcher
COMMUNITY MEMBER PERSPECTIVES
Baby Bernard (pictures left), member of the community WASH Management Team in Fulawahun in one of the ODF communities explained to the mobilizers on evaluation exercise of the new innovation how effective the fly catcher in her latrine had proved to be. “More than a hundred flies have been trapped in ten days” remarked Baby Bernard. She explained that she hopes GOAL can share this innovation with other communities.
In Kenjama another ODF community, Morie Morray(one of the CLTS Natural Leaders, pictured left) also explained how he has benefited from the fly catcher. “Less flies fly around my latrine, since I hung the Fly Catcher most of them are in the Catcher”. This innovation will be shared with other communities that have problems with plenty flies visiting their latrines.
By:
YAMBASU MENJOH KOKER
COMMUNITY MOBILIZER-TEAM LEADER
GOAL-IRELAND