HOLY CRAPPER – COMPOST TOILETS IN BHUTAN
The beginning
It all started way back in 2003. I was living the self-sufficient dream at Vajradhara Gonpa in the jungle-clad hills of sub-tropical Australia when my Bhutanese meditation teacher, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, accepted a dinner invitation. At some point, he nipped out to use our home-built composting toilet, and I guess he was impressed – so impressed that 11 years later, when I asked if he needed help with any volunteer jobs, he recalled the occasion.
“I have a monastery in Eastern Bhutan,” he told me. “We have enough toilets for the monks, but when we hold a big ceremony, there are so many visitors who make a terrible mess with their business. Can you build an ecologically sustainable toilet as an example to the villagers?”
Holy crap
“Ah, I’m better with solar than with faeces….”
“Electricity is not important,” he assured me. “Not while South Asia is drowning in its own shit.”
“So…..how many people are we talking about?” I hesitate to ask.
“We don’t know – about 5000….maybe ten.” Oh dear, that is a lot of pooh.
Although this sounded like a shitty task, the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is a wonderful place, which usually costs USD250 per day just to visit, so I agreed to give it a try. I mean – how hard could it be?
Famous last words
In April 2014 I made my first visit to the charming Chokyi Gyatso Institute in Bhutan’s remote far-east. I found a picturesque monastery which clings to the side of a precipitous ridge high above the hamlet of Dewathang. With every inch of usable land already occupied with buildings, I was offered an impossibly steep site 100 metres down a treacherous track from the lowest building in the complex. The monk in charge of construction assured me that with retaining walls and a decent staircase, they could create a workable site. I reluctantly agreed, then tasked him with site preparation.
What could possibly go wrong?
I returned in January 2015 to discover that the monks had engaged some local stone masons to build their own wayward idea of composting chambers, despite having not even seen my plans. They had also poured a slab on top, and were about to set to work on the building above. An engineer quickly determined that compost toilet mark 1 would collapse under its own weight in no time, so I ordered its demolition and engaged a building contractor.
If at first you don’t succeed….
Three months is a very short time in Bhutan, but we managed to get a fair portion of the building completed before my visa expired, so I left the crew there to finish off the job. Meanwhile, I had time to write this little ditty about my time there.
Dewathang Ditty (The Rice Song) by Simon Thomas
Disaster strikes
Dewathang is one of the wettest towns on earth with an annual rainfall is 5.5 metres. The great flood of July 2015 was quite an event, and the resulting landslide ran straight through the nearly completed toilet block mark 2, destroying it beyond repair.
Turd time lucky
On my next visit, I was pleasantly surprised to be offered another site, closer to the temple and somewhat more stable than the first. Due to the complications of getting anything done in this far away outpost, my visa again expired shortly after construction began. The plan was that I should return before the first usage of the facility to prepare the compost chambers with organic material, and check that the work had been properly completed. I was shocked some time later to be informed that the toilets had been opened up for use, and that they were getting rather smelly. No wonder! Without the correct preparation, they were crapping into an empty concrete room.
The final preparation
So it was that in December 2017, I headed back to Dewathang to sort out the mess. After a month of repairing faults and problems, almost 4 years since the original idea was flown, I handed over the keys to what probably qualifies as the most expensive toilet in Bhutan!
These monks are stars!
As part of the Lhomon Education initiative, I was invited to conduct a song writing workshop with the young monks at the institute. Check out this great song which they wrote and performed themselves to celebrate the theme of healthy living. Please share!
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