4.4 TECHNOLOGY PATH-FARMLAND, RAINWATER & BIOGAS PLANT

There are several famous markets in Senegal such as the Marche Kermel, Marche Sandaga, Marche de Ouakam in Dakar (Culture Trip, N.A.). As shown in the photos below, the markets are really simple to set up and free to trade. People just put their goods on piece of cloth or table or even on their own head for sell. It will be more familiar with the local people since the proposal will only be an empty playground with suggested information of setting up a market. Moreover, at the market, they can not only sell the products harvest from the farm but also from the handcraft lessons of transform recyclable waste into decorations to enhance the skills of women and increase their sense of value of different goods.

Fig.9 Markets in Dakar, Senegal 4.4 Technology Path-farmland, Rainwater & Biogas Plant

The technology path connects the biogas plant, rainwater collection point and farmland. This path offers a tour through all the technical issues that can solve practice problems such as food security, access of water source, low energy or green energy strategies. There is a fence that proposed along the north west boundary of the site to ensure the safety of the activities happen in this community house. The food insecurity in local area that caused mostly due to lack of clean water source, climate change that caused crops decrease in production. Clean water source is really hard to ensure in local area. The only option that this project can proposed is to ask for local or national government and non-government organization’s help to offer portable filtration taps to local area, but this is not a long-term solution and the reason why our team could not offer this option is due to the cost limit of budget. Instead, there has been a proposed rainwater collection tank that connects directly to the downpipe which connects with the gutter to harvest the rainfall and store it as another water source. And for climate change, it is not something that could be changed by human beings. But according to Borgen Magazine (2017), growing ledyour, onions and rice seeds can let local people survive through the food insecurity led by climate change. Moreover, there are people who could not afford buying fertilizer for their farming. So, a simple biogas plant is provided to the local area which can transform human waste into fertilizer. This does not only save the money buying fertilizer but also provide a more clean-living environment for local area since they only bury their human waste underground which can cause damage to the soil type and unpleasant smell. The simple sketch below shows the biogas plant, rainwater tank and farmland.

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4.4.1 Rainwater System The rainwater system is really simple to illustrate. Since the roof of community house is tilted roof, the rainwater will be easily directing into the gutter and get down through downpipe to the water tank storage. The rainfall in Senegal always starts from June and ceases in October. The average amount of annual rainfall is approximately 500mm (Britannica, N.A.). It is not much but it can definitely be a water source of watering the farm and flushing the toilet.

4.4.2 Biogas Plant System The biogas plant will directly connect to the toilet pit through a sloped tunnel underground. The entire biogas plant will be approximately 500 centimeter lower than the ground surface of the toilet in order to use the gravity to lead human waste into the plant and transform into fertilizer. The lower ground can also provide a barrier that if there is a chance of leakage of the plant, it will not affect normal activities happen on site. The entire plant will be protected by bamboo fences to keep children out of it and reduce the possibility of spreading disease caused by bacteria. There will be a barrier door that controls the open and close of the plant for collecting fertilizer to avoid direct exposure of human waste and people. The diagram below

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shows the simple workflow of biogas plant.

Moreover, the government in Senegal has initiated a clean city plan in urban area of Senegal to transform human waste into clean energy which mainly consists of two parts (GGGI, 2016). The first part is to ask people selling their poops and collected by uber poop service in order to reduce the waste dump in streets to create a better living environment. The second part is to deliver all these human waste into the government supported biogas plant to generate into clean energy for second use. There are also more projects that in progress of setting up more biogas plant in urban area in Senegal. Moreover, articles have been suggested that there is an essential need of installing biogas plant in rural area. For instance, according to Ba & Médoc (2017), suggested that biogas is a renewable energy and should be adopted by the local area not only as a place to decomposing into fertilizer but also a large portion of electricity usage to local area. But for this project, the proposal we only offered is the fertilizer one and the electricity could be a long-term goal if the previous steps works well since it requires more complex system and knowledge.

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