Camansihay Site Overview

Camansihay is the name of an All Hands Philippines project in Tacloban where we are building a classroom for the Camansihay elementary school. While most All Hands Philippines projects are done in partnership with other organizations who provide funding, building plans, and other construction guidelines, Camansihay is a little different.

Rather than being built in partnership with other organizations, the Camansihay classroom is funded by an anonymous donor in the US who donated $22,000-23,000 (I forget the actual number). This means that the building design and approach can be designed completely by All Hands, as long as it meets certain country-wide specifications. So, All Hands is using a government classroom template with some modified materials (the original template is too expensive) and a customized septic tank. All modifications from the original template were signed off by a company contracting with the government, so it’s up to par with all country building specifications, including building precautions designed to ensure minimal structural damage during a typhoon.

The reason a new classroom is needed for the Camansihay school is that there is a large influx of permanent housing being built within the school district. This means that new students will soon be added to Camansihay, raising their student count to around 60-70 students per class (from 30-40). An extra classroom will help keep the average class size down and provide better resources for the children to learn.

Additionally, the customized septic tank in itself is actually quite interesting. The standard septic tank in the Philippines is a bottomless model, which means that there is a hole in the bottom for the waste to slowly seep out into the soil and disperse. There are many issues with this, but the main one being that waste does not reside in the tank long enough for the bacteria to die off. The bacteria then seeps into the soil and makes its way into water sources that are used for bathing and washing.

The septic tank we are installing for the classroom is a bit different. It comprises of two tanks that will minimize the amount of bacteria that ends up in the soil. The first tank has two chambers and holds the waste for a few days, allowing some of the bacteria to eat the nutrients in the waste. The idea is that once the nutrients are gone, the concentration of bacteria in the excrement will decrease, as it has nothing to feed off of. The first chamber is where the waste initially gets dumped, with solids sinking to the bottom and liquids overflowing into the second chamber.

2 chambers, 1 tank

After a few days, the liquids/semi-solids from the second chamber of the first tank will overflow into the second tank, where it stays for another few days, continuing the neutralization process. After the second tank, the materials are then distributed through three long pipelines, each with tiny holes throughout the length of the pipe to allow the mixture to disperse into the soil in small amounts over a large area. At this point, the amount of bacteria still in the waste is minimal, and the pipelines are buried below dense vegetation so the plants will suck up any of the remaining nutrients before it reaches a water source. The reason we don’t want bacteria in the water supply is obvious, but the reason we don’t want nutrients to reach the rivers is that nutrients will create algae, which takes up oxygen and kills fish.

Now that I’ve spent half a post talking about septic tanks and human waste, here are some pictures of the school site. It is scheduled to be completed by mid January.