Tribewanted: Vorovoro

One of the projects initiated during my time as Chief is the creation of a kitchen waste/livestock manure digester – a BIOGAS creator – that will enable us to utilize the food waste that cannot otherwise be composted or fed to the livestock.

In simple terms, waste is fed into the digester where it is broken down into a gas we can use in the kitchen as an alternative to propane. It will move us further in the direction of total island self sufficiency, and will also save money we would have otherwise spent on propane and fuel for its transport to the island.

I was hovering behind Duncan this morning as he explained the construction and concept to PuPu, Marau and Menuci who are working on the project. We were told all the kitchen waste, chicken poo and pig poo (more on pigs later) will be put into the digester and I said “and human poo?” Duncan said “Oh sure, we could use human poo, but no one is going to want to shovel it.”

Feeling like the naughty kid in school, I whispered to Marau “How come we have no trouble dealing with pig poo and chicken poo, but we won’t deal with human poo? It’s all the same stuff.” Marau giggled and said “Yes yes, it’s all the same” then giggled some more. I love the sound of Marau’s laughter.

The waste digester/biogas production unit is located right in behind the main block of composting toilets. Less than five feet away from a contraption that will enable us to create our very own natural gas from livestock manure is where all we human Vorovorians poo. And poo we do. Shitloads in fact.

This led me to question why – even though we human folk aren’t above shoveling pig poo, horse poo, scooping poop up after our dogs, taking clumps of cat poo out of the litter box, even wiping that funny slimey runny poo from babies’ bottoms – are we so very reticent to scoop our own poop?

My initial thinking is that we like to think of ourselves as more evolved, more “civilized” than other creatures, we essentially like to pretend we do not actually poo. Well, at least not like ANIMALS poo… but, well, we do. Poo that is. Just like all the other critters on the planet.

What it is very easy to become disconnected from in our daily, city, lives is the fact that we, other mammals, birds, fish etc are all exceptionally interdependent. We humans are as much a part of nature as any little lizard or cow or chicken. Our digestive systems are all very similar. We all eat, digest and produce waste – we all poo.

Are we really above using our own poo to generate gas to cook food that we will eat, digest and poo out again? Is it really so scary to remember we are simply mammals?

Surely, we consider ourselves more intelligent than other species, but I can’t think of another animal that would be so lacking in intelligence as to reject a source of nourishment that it could easily access in favour of a more expensive and time consuming means of acquiring it.

Can you imagine your average monkey exerting the extra time, effort and expense of going to the shop to buy bananas when she could easily climb the nearest tree and get some? Would we truly consider her more evolved, civilized, astute, or of higher social status if she did go to the shop for bananas when they were within arms reach? I think I’d lean toward considering her a bit on the dim side for not taking advantage of her natural resources, and wasting her time and money to boot.

Will I be first to empty one of the compost loo chambers into the waste digester? Maybe. Perhaps though, I’ll start small, deal with my own poo directly, but not anyone else’s just yet. Maybe, once the biogas digester is ready, I’ll take a bucket up to the loo, have a poo in the bucket, then – if no one is watching, I’m a bit shy – deposit the bucket’s contents directly into the digester to be transformed into cooking gas.

It’ll be new, it’ll be humbling, exciting, exhilarating even! Well maybe not, but if nothing else, I’ll know I’ve successfully boiled the kettle for my coffee using fuel I personally produced. It might be very satisfying…quietly satisfying, kind of like having a really good poo.