On a moonlit night, almost as bright as day, when even scoundrels and vagabonds fear the dawn, from o’ the murk the bones of a beast of terrible size can be seen lurking next to the surf. But this is no mythical monster. This apparition; as old as time, as terrifying as the dark, is a ship from days long gone, slumbering where she fell in the waters of Mantanani Island!

“Ahoy m’hearties! Be you in need of shelter?” calls a voice from beyond the vessel.

A ghost? A Pirate survived from the heyday of buccaneers? A child who has watched too many Jonny Depp films?

No, it’s a member of the Camp Borneo staff (for that’s how they speak on Mantanani… honest.) And he’s beckoning you over to take a look at The Magellan, our very own Pirate Ship! (Or the remains thereof.) So, why on earth do we need a pirate ship? Well… we don’t and that’s just the point. When you’ve got community projects galore, marine conservation work, scuba diving and endless games of football with the local kids all nestled neatly onto one desert island, what else could you possibly need…?

Exactly! Your own Pirate Ship made out of driftwood and recycled rubbish that has collected on the beach of the otherwise pristine island. 

Now obviously it’s nowhere near finished yet, but our gappers have made a great start this year (those HUGE driftwood planks ain’t light y’know!) but we are looking forward to screaming “Pieces of Eight!” “Shiver me Timbers!” and generally going “Arrrrrh, Jim Lad!” by this time next year in a finished, if landlocked, boat… So if you’re up to the challenge…? And if you don’t mind, y’know… building a kindergarten, teaching English, measuring some turtles and learning to scuba dive when you have some spare time away from the Magellan. Why not give us a call?

On a serious note, apart from being tremendous fun, we are building the Magellan to act as a backdrop to our marine conservation and education programmes. Being built entirely of “stuff” that has washed ashore from the sea it will easily illustrate, not only to our volunteers but also the children at the local primary school, the need to be more aware of marine life, the dangers humans pose to it and how we can begin to help.

So, once finished the Magellan will act as a classroom, playground and general place to hang out and watch the sunset. Can’t wait!

To see more pictures of our slowly emerging Pirate Ship and from our other projects on Mantanani, click here.

My first draft of this post was, in no uncertain terms, a work of genius. It was informative, revealing, entertaining, moving, shocking and uplifting. It had characters, subplots, themes…

…and crucially it contained every metaphor, synonym, expression and simile for excrement I could think of, expertly woven in seamless fashion into the narrative to be almost imperceptible to those not in on the joke. Honestly, I even managed to crowbar “touching cloth” and “turtle’s head” in there without being too obvious!

Sure, the topic of our Biogas Collector does lend itself to a certain amount of, well… toilet humour; however, as you will have read in our previous post on the project we are talking about a pretty amazing and potentially life changing piece of design coupled with mother nature at her most resourceful, so it seemed petty of me to bring it down to the basic component… poop. There seems to have been enough of that going round here recently as it is.

With the project nearing completion thanks to the amazing work of our Gap teams this year, I recently took the opportunity to visit Camp Tinangol with our BGC’s designer and friend to Camp Borneo, Ian Hall, to see the last checks and pipes put in place before our very first deposit… which we even captured on film!

Luckily for you, the biogas collector isn’t a one dimensional poo based methane gas creator so the resulting film wasn’t quite as disturbing as you might think.

The BGC can quite happily use other natural waste, like food leftovers, kitchen scraps and even some garden trimmings, to produce its highly practical methane gas which in our case will, once we have given the waste products enough time to start the process, be used for cooking.

However with the possibility for the gas to also be used for lighting and heating we could be looking at a design that could be rolled out to communities across our camp locations in Africa, South East Asia and beyond to make a world of difference to those willing to use it. Yes, we are aware there may be some initial reluctance to overcome – - “You’re cooking with gas from what?!?” – - and we of course still have to make sure the beasty actually works (fingers crossed!) but come on, how amazing would it be for poor remote communities to be able to have access to free fuel for cooking, lighting and heating? This, as well as saving money, would also decrease the need to harvest wood sources and so help protect local eco-systems. Everyone’s a winner! Isn’t nature great?

By chance, on the day the plumbing for the BGC was completed Camp Tinangol was host to a party for the local community attended by Dr Maximus Ongkili, the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation in the Malaysian government. It was a celebration for the completion of a new road which provided much needed access for local communities, but we of course took the opportunity to re-introduce ourselves to the good doctor and explain what we had been up to with our Gappers in the community. However, our chance for Dr Maximus to be the first to provide the… err…  “Official results for the Dunny-on-the-Wold bye-election”, were scuppered when he decided to talk politics to the gathered throng rather than poo. (Pauses for cynical cry of “what’s the difference!”)

But, whilst we missed the opportunity of seeing a government minister leaving a toilet cubicle with a bashful smile whilst sporting an orange Camp Borneo T-Shirt and saying “I now declare this bio-gas collector open!”, Doctor Maximus was kind enough to publicly acknowledge the good work the clients and staff of Camp Borneo are doing in and around Tinangol (It’s not all about poo). And a few minutes later the karaoke started… sadly, that can never be avoided. And Ian and I did sing a song… but only after I requested that Doctor Maximus should dance whilst we sing…

…he did.

If you want to see further pics of the BGC and the resulting party, click here.

We certainly hope for global Peace One Day but we are going to keep Peace everyday. Yes, yes, I know I have been going on about this for a while but there is a lot to go on about. We were very lucky to have Mike and Jag with us over through our Peace One Day event in Camp Borneo. They have cut an amazing video!

Big thanks to Mike and Jag and do have a look at what happened in Tanzania HERE and Kenya HERE. We are in this for the long haul!

The world knows that something is desperately wrong with the climate these days and it’s top of the agenda for global leaders and policy makers. This year thousands of bloggers came together yesterday to bring together a global voice for action to be taken against Climate Change. In Kenya, we don’t have to be told – we can see it and feel it. Two years of drought followed by El Nino floods in parts of the country. Phrases like carbon footprint and offsetting carbon have become for many a part of our daily lingo. Thankfully it is not all doom and gloom (at least not in our generation), as the rains have finally arrived…but it is certainly a wake-up call to all.

Where we are at

The bottom-line is we can all do our bit and we at Camps would like to think that we are taking a road less traveled. We have been planting trees for years thanks to all our volunteers who share our mission for being responsible travelers. Recently, we have been trying to take it one step further. At Camp Borneo, the team has been busy building a prototype bio gas collector (yes, there is a whole lot of energy that comes out of rear  ends!)

And in Kenya, we have had a long standing relationship with WWF to protect local forests and support alternative ways for communities to create an income without having to cut trees down. It’s not enough to tell people not to cut trees when they can barely feed themselves and we understand this. The local Farmer’s Center at Muhaka has become a buzz of activities for finding alternative eco-friendly fuels like jatropha as a biofuel to replace paraffin at homes (afraid there aint no electricity around here!) and now we are well underway with piloting our organic charcoal briquette project:

Where we are going

But we still know that there is so much more we can do and we want to do. So when some friendly chaps from a company called CO2balance came knocking at the door, we were quite excited to learn about the various projects they support across the world to find sustainable and financially viable ways for individuals to massive corporates to offset their carbon footprint. And right in our own backyard!

Best to let them explain what this is all about…

co2balance is working with local social groups in the Ukunda region of Kenya, East Africa to replace the use of open fires for cooking with energy efficient cooking stoves.   Our energy efficient stoves are made entirely in East Africa and utilise the ‘Rocket stove’ technology which offers a good balance between cost, life expectancy and efficiency.  These stoves reduce firewood consumption by half and save in the region of 3.05 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year, 15.25 tonnes over the 5 year life span, in comparison to traditional cooking methods.

In addition to the saving in greenhouse gas emissions, the reduced need for firewood and the burning of rubbish leads to a corresponding reduction in the amount of time spent collecting cooking fuel.  The recipients of the energy efficient technology also gain considerable co-benefits such as reduced costs and a considerably improved environment from a health and safety perspective.

This is another example of co2balance seeking projects with a wide range of additional benefits to the receiving community, including health, financial, social and environmental. In this way, we can maximise the project’s achievements beyond simple carbon saving.

(If you would like to read more about this particular project, click HERE)

The ball began to roll a few months ago when CO2balance was keen to get a fuel-efficient stove program going in and around the Tsavo ecosystem so we helped to arrange various meetings with key community leaders like our good friends at Imani Women’s Group. In a couple of months over 400 stoves were built at individual homes and there are plans for another 1200!

As Ruphence (above) states: “This is a great stove. It works very good and very fast. Now I only use 2 k of charcoal when I was using 5. I can cook my beans and my ugali very quickly, so there is always food ready and none of my customers have to wait. They are all saying that Ruphence has the best café here and they are right. I have a good stove and I love it very much. I hope that I can get another one because then I can make this place bigger. It is a very very good project. I want to say Asante sana (thank you very much) to co2balance”.

What we can all do

For those of you that travel with us, you all know that our projects come first and foremost (ok, ok and a bit of fun too!) and thus, we have every intention of working with CO2balance to build as many stoves for communities that we work with in Kenya to start with so there is a lot to look forward to next year. But we want to take this one step further and do realise that taking responsibility starts at the very beginning of the journey if not before and whilst we will be busy planting many more trees, building stoves and bio-gas collectors, we would like to offer anyone who wants to, the option to offset their carbon from air travel. The journey starts at home and we hope that this will be a road more travelled…

SEPTEMBER 21st: A global calling for just one day of peace from putting down our weapons to playing a game of football with our neighbors….that is the vision that Jeremy Giley had over 10 years ago and today, the calling has reached Presidents and Prime Ministers all over the world. In the words of the Dalai Lama:

“We must make every effort for the promotion of peace and inner values. I fully support [Peace One Day].” His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Laureate

The story has been documented right from its inception and today tens of thousands of people worldwide are taking action in the name of Peace One Day – and yes, that includes us at Camps International and the hundreds of people that we have built relationships with from Borneo to Tanzania to Kenya:

We kicked off in Tanzania with a host of school based activities and marched across the town carrying banners of Peace!

Click HERE for more photos from Camp Tanzania’s Peace One Day.

And part of Jeremy’s vision was to make sure everything is documented. We came across this great short video that shows how sport is so integral and such an important way of bringing us humans together:

For us, at Camps International we wanted to take this vision and push aside all this talk of Human-Wildlife Conflict and start thinking about it all as Human-Wildlife Cooperation:

Human Wildlife Peace Day 2009

As human populations continue to grow exponentially, an increasing number of people are moving away from towns and encroaching on traditional wildlife habitat, forcing animals into ever smaller and fragmented areas where people and animals are increasingly coming into conflict over living space and resources such as food. The impacts of this are often huge. People lose their crops, livestock, property and sometimes their lives. The animals, many of which are already endangered, are often killed in retaliation or to ‘prevent’ future conflicts.

The primary focus for this day will be to bring communities and wildlife that are essentially at conflict together to leave aside the conflict and celebrate a shared environment. The sustainability of this approach will be explored through our long term commitment to reducing human-wildlife conflict and equally important to explore the possibilities of a global paradigm shift from ‘Human-Wildlife Conflict’ to ‘Human-Wildlife Cooperation’ This might be ambitious to push for a change in approach through language and implementation but has a range of positive possibilities that could follow.

The media are well aware of what we are up to. To read one of the latest stories online, click HERE. We are on a roll in Kenya and have just begun with the kick-off in Tanzania and Borneo. Our gappers have been in Tsavo since the official Peace One Day but have been wroking for over a week with local school kids from Sasenyi with a host of activities with the aim of bringing together the possibilities of more cooperation and benefits between wildlife and humans that co-exist together in places like Tsavo.

We know it’s a dream but everyone has to have one and yes, Peace One Day is part of our dream!

Following on from my last post about the Bio Gas collector (Human waste is where its at), I want to now run you through our progress to date.  Before I do that below is a sketch drawing of whats involved in the construction.  Basically several tanks joined together, a bit of wizardry with water pressure and balancing and a domed lid with a pipe coming off it.

Our plan is to build our very own bio gas collector as a prototype so that we can demonstrate the technology and building requirements to interested parties in the hope that they can role it out in different locations.  In addition we hope to be able to start building them for remote rural communities with sufficient “poop” capacity to make them worthwhile.  We may start this process in the community of Tinangol where people live very closely together and it lends itself to their use – we will see!

The process of building the collector is actually relatively simple which I will show here with a number of pictures.  Firstly a large hole is dug and a concave concrete base laid.

Then a basic double skinned brick wall is laid to just above the surface including the rectangular balancing tank on the side.

These are then skimmed with concrete to make sure they are water (poop!) tight.

Drains and sewage inlet/outlet pipes are then laid including an additional “mixing” inlet to allow kitchen and other biodegradable waste to be added.

Then comes the tricky part of constructing the dome – we have opted to do this using ferro-cement building technique – this is basically iron rods bent into shape, covered with a fine mesh and then plastered with cement to provide a smooth internal and external surface.  This is then secured onto the main tank using more iron work ensuring it doesn’t fly off under huge gas pressure.

The final task is connecting all the piping and diverting the “poop” flow into the digester.

In order to fully monitor and assess its efficiency we have devised a simple volume measurement for waste going in – and people think I am mad when I tell them but we plan to have a clip board in the toilets.  On this people will tick whether they “laid” a small, medium or large (I will have to quantify these!) “package” and also what was its consistency (fluid, normal or rock) and how many pans of water to flush it away.  Hopefully this should give us an idea of volume of waste to water.

And that’s about it so far – we will be connecting the one at Tinangol very soon and will be building one for the new Sun Bear Conservation Centre at Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary this month.  I will keep you posted of progress and if you are really interested the volumes!! Happy crapping everyone!!

PS – All drawings & design work done by Ian – you can check out his other stuff on his blog here…..

Its true – human waste is where its at! Its the future you know – dont need any of this extracting gas and oil from the centre of the earth with all its associated detrimental environmental effects – just use what you flush away every day.  This is the ultimate in recycling and minimising your impact – so sit back and learn about Bio Gas Collectors – even better sit back and learn whilst contributing to your bio gas collector, if you get my drift!

And now for the technical stuff, apologies if you are eating your dinner whilst reading this!! Basically any waste from animals, or any other bio waste, when it bio degrades gives off methane gas.  And all a bio gas collector does is collect this gas and enable the user to burn this gas in a stove or even lighting.  Apparently humans, chickens and pigs are best since we eat all sorts of rubbish and therefore give off good quality gas – I am sure you know someone, possibly within your own family who gives off good gas! Cows and other grass eaters are not so good since their bodies are designed (loads of stomachs you know) to break their food to such a degree that they actual fart methane – cows are one of the higher contributers to green house gases – so most of the useful gas has already escaped before the waste (cow pat) leaves the cows posterior – however it can still be used but not as a main stay of the collector.

And so why am I going on about this – well myself and my good mate Ian (the architect, featured on previous blog posts) got to talking about it (as you do across a bar, you often find the conversation turning to toilet humour) and we reckoned there was some scope for experimenting and seeing if perhaps this is a good way of reducing our carbon footprint and doing a little something to help the planet – it may be small be every little bit helps and as the saying goes, or at least my saying, “a lot of littles make a big!” – (first coined when teaching people what to pack (or not to pack) in their rucksack prior to a 3 week trek).

So I am going to do some posts on the bio gas collector we are building at our camp in Tinangol – we are hoping that we can get this prototype sorted and roll it out in other communities where it might work.  And myself and Ian are not trying to convince people that Bio Gas Collectors are our idea – no way, they have been around for quite some time and are used to differing effect in Asia and I am sure beyond. However what we are trying to do (well Ian is doing most of this technical stuff) is make it “buildable” by a group of unskilled volunteers with little if any expertise whilst also trying to keep the cost down – but more on this and the design over the next few weeks.

So next time you are sat on your porcelain throne at home (which I hope is at least once a day – although I know someone who is on it at least 4 times – no names hey Stu, but at the other extreme I knew a girl once who only “dropped the kids off at school” once every 3 weeks – now surely that cant be healthy!) – anyway next time  you’re  sat on the throne, contemplate the potential energy of your “produce”  and ask your family if they wouldnt mind helping dig a large hole in the backyard and building a bio gas collector. Watch this space for more amusing toilet tales as we watch the progress and get down and dirty on the build of our very own Bio Gas Collector.

How often can you say “Tony Blair came for a visit when we were planting ferns on the screen walls of the Sunbear house today”!!! Only in Borneo..

More details on Mr. Blair’s visit here…

Here’s a visual testament  of  our volunteers at work a few days ago at the Bornean Sunbear Conservation Centre.

A year ago I was welcomed on board to Camps.  Rory, our Asia Director said to me after accepting the job and I quote “This is really exciting and its going to be a real rollercoaster ride so standby!!”.  Indeed a rollercoaster it has been for us setting up our Borneo Team and Camps but nothing could describe how trully rewarding and quite an exciting ride it has been and undoubtedly will continue on to be a rewarding, challenging and an adventurous experience behold!

So, the day came and passed and on-going since our first Gap year volunteers, “the pioneers”, arrived getting themselves stuck into brilliantly on our  CB1, CB2 & CB3 programs and worthy projects.  Our volunteers have been really active learning about the culture, tradition and language aside from project work on Bio Gas Collector, teaching English and painting at the kindie, Marine awareness program at Camp Mantanani, planting trees in the Kinabatangan forest, Sunbear conservation work at BSBCC and more.  Regular football and volleyball friendly matches were also held within the community every week.

The Friendliness, warmth and hospitality of local communities have made a great impact to our volunteers stay in Borneo despite our cultural differences and traditional beliefs.

…and so The Orange Team was born !

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step…

Staff in deep discussions prior to first arrivals

Digging a hole for Bio Gas Collector project…

Doing some painting and project work at the kindergarten

Open water diving at Mantanani island..

The build at our camp on Mantanani Island is coming to an end – its been a long process with all sorts of challenges and complications to keep us on our toes along the way.  You have already seen some of the pictures of the first building which is the Camp Manager’s house and office.  It also doubles as a dive gear store room and houses the compressor for refilling the dive tanks.  It is now brightly painted although we need to finish off the downstairs boarding in an equally bright colour.  We have put the boarding up in a rush to keep out the inclement weather which has been affecting the island for the past week or so.

The two new buildings are a toilet block and what I call a “basha” – this is basically a structure where we hang hammocks and sleep – so if you like the bedroom!  Throughout our design and concept of the buildings here we have been looking to make sure we are as environmentally friendly as possible – now its not always possible to be completely “eco-friendly”, particularly doing building work and on a remote island.  However we have endeavoured to do our best and will gradually refine the systems as we progress.  

The buildings and general concept work was done by an “environmentally responsible” architect based here in Malaysia.  His name is Ian Hall (no relation) and you can check out his blog and work here.  One of main concerns with the build was reducing the amount of hardwood we put into the structures and therefore took out of the nearby jungles. So we did some exploratory work with coconut palm which grows widely across northern Borneo.  The trouble with this is it is a soft wood, hard on the outside and very soft in the centre which makes it difficult to work with – and will only usually last 5 to 10 years maximum.  There are coconut palms on Mantanani but since it is a small island they are not wide spread – so we looked at bringing them over from the main land but the logistics proved difficult as well as the locals looking at us is we were bonkers – going to all this effort to bring in wood which is grown locally and secondly only lasts a short time.  So we spent quite a bit of time explaining what we were trying to achieve and I think finally the penny has dropped.  With the difficulties of coconut palm, we turned to a major resource on the beaches of Mantanani – huge amounts of drift wood.  After a little bit of initial reticence the  local builders have embraced the concept and so we have our main supporting upright posts all made from drift wood.  Ian worked hard on designing some user friendly joins to make our designs work and some detailed drawings for the builders to use.  It has worked out to be a complete success and looks really great as you can see from the pictures below.

The other main issue on the island is water usage and sewage treatment – again Ian has put a lot of time and effort into this and designed a system to minimise our impact.  This obviously includes optimal rain water collection from all roofs, recycling of “grey” water for flushing toilets, use of local “squat pan” toilets and “pan” washing rather than showers to reduce water usage. Our intention is to take grey water  and water from the septic tank and pipe it through a reed bed before re-using it or allowing it to filter back into the island’s core – more on this in the future as we start to build the reed bed and associated piping.  

We have also used some local workers in our other camp at Tinangol to make some bamboo blinds for us, again giving a natural look but also providing additional income to our communities. 

Keep yours eyes on this blog for more info on the actual work going on at the camp and future building ideas.