Marianne Knuth
Founder, Kufunda Village
Zimbawe
[IM-BOOT]: "WHAT's your favourite idea or call it invention (service or product) at the moment?"
Our compost toilets. About 50% of the families that we work with do not have toilets. The government and several aid organisations built half a million toilets in the rural areas in the eighties and early nineties, but these are of the kind that slowly but surely fill up, and now 10-15 years down the road these Blair toilets are full, and due to our worsening economic and political situation people cannot afford to build their own new ones. Also they simply hold all the s... instead of making good use of the output from our bodies.
Now the compost toilet is different. With one bag of cement you can build 5 toilets! Through the process of adding soil and ash each time you do your toilet business, each toilet will eventually become the site to plant a tree (mostly we are recommending fruit trees that can one day also feed the families). So instead of having a crumbling structure where the full unused Blair toilet stands, these toilets within one year turn into the site for a young tree that takes its nutrients from the composting humus.
What makes this toilet even more amazing, is that is it a simple structure that moves as the pit fills up. So the toilet keeps moving from site to site, ever recyclable. The toilet simply shifts location annually, and a tree takes its place. By the end of the 10 years that was the lifespan of the old Blair toilets, these toilets will have given life to 10 trees, and still be able to continue their journey. Not bad, hey?
We are working with five communities in a drive to ensure that every family gets their own toilet by providing them with a simple starter kit that enables them to build their own compost toilet. We can do this for the impressive figure of 10 USD per kit. I trust you can understand my excitement.
It is our hope that as more and more people have their own compost toilets more will invest in their own, as this is a more affordable solution. Right now people don’t know of this option – it is our work to teach the technique, and to invest in the creation of at least a couple of 100 toilets per community, such that it eventually arrives in peoples field of vision, so they know that this option exists for them, to be able to ensure with few resources, that they have sanitation which contributes positively in more ways than one.
[IM-BOOT]: "HOW do you get the "flash" (of inspiration)?"
From being in the situation, the moment, the context. By working with people, thinking and working through things together. Solutions evolve. It is when we engage in a different kind of listening - tuning into what is emerging between us. Inspiration arrives in the moment, when we are present to what we are intending to create (or solve) and able to truly listen it forth among us. It is a little difficult to explain, but let me try to elaborate it a little further, at a broader level:
This process of inspiration I have come to see today as being a part of the world creating itself, as we learn to listen.
It is this process that has in fact led me to found Kufunda Village, our learning village dedicated to supporting the creation of healthy vibrant communities in Zimbabwe. I returned to Zimbabwe in September of 2001 just as the country began its descent into the political darkness and chaos that we are still living through. My return was not a rational choice, or a grand plan for my role in serving Zimbabwe and her people. With my return to Zimbabwe, I simply stepped into what the universe was asking of me. I listened. I did not disregard what my intuition and body were telling me, calling me back…
And as I continue on my path, building and growing the learning centre and our relationships with our partner communities, I continue to deepen my experience of listening for what next. I work with no grand plan, though a strict adherence to some key principles, and a strong and clear sense of purpose. How it unfolds then unfolds with me, a collaborator, working with far greater intelligence than my own alone. I am working with this land, her people, and the world wanting to create itself through us. And as we learn to listen, trust and then act, we are in fact presencing the emergent, or as my friend Jeff Barnum would describe it: “letting the contours of the future pour into the present.”
Our compost toilets, and other exciting ventures, are in fact showing up to us and through us, in ways that are often surprising also to us, as we continue this work of presencing the future.
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Marianne Knuth is of Danish and Zimbabwean origin. After completing a Masters in International Business and Economics at the Business School of Copenhagen in 1999, she co-created  Pioneers of Change with a group of friends. After being one of the leaders for three years, she decided to to return to her roots, to Zimbabwe.
"I look forward to discovering the wisdom of the people and their practices, as I have returned to support them in returning their communities to a state of vibrant creativity and self-reliance. A starting assumption for my work here is that people already know how to work in creative and self-sufficient ways, and that the challenge is to help them access that knowledge - and the self-confidence to act on it - generating concrete and often surprising results in the process." -- cited from her website.
Additional Information:
Kufunda Village Online
Pioneers of Change
Country Information
- Southern Africa, between South Africa and Zambia
- Area: 390,580 sq km
- Population: 12,671,860
- Life Expectancy: total population: 37.82 years
- HIV/AIDS - adult prevalance rate: 33.7%
- Capital City: Harare
- Languages: English, Shona, Sindebele
- Climate: tropical; moderated by altitude; rainy season (November to March)
- Between 50-75% of Zimbabweans in need of food aid
- Unemployment rate is estimated at over 70% and rising
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