The Dishwashing Blog

 By Emily Wells 

This year I worked with FHF Kenya nutritionist, James Mutahi, on developing a school dishwashing program for the 23 schools that we work with in Meru County, Kenya.  The children wash their own school meal dishes- until now by simply rinsing them with water from the rainwater tank.  Virtually none of the schools have piped water.

Working with a limited budget, we’ve collaborated with a local hardware store and a welder to modify the traditional aluminum cooking pots ‘Sufurias’, adding a drain to transform them into improvised sinks. These new sinks will be filled with rainwater and then positioned so the grey water can drain into the school garden, which is of course particularly important during the dry seasons.  

The process, supervised by a teacher, has four steps. The first three are the aluminum sinks and the fourth uses a plastic basin:

1) rinsing and removing residual food.

2) washing in detergent

3) rinsing off soap

4) sanitizing with bleach water so the final basin is plastic since bleach corrodes aluminum.

We’ve found a local supplier in Meru Market… Milka Chemicals for the concentrated cleaning products - detergent and sanitizer.  She sells all her products in reclaimed plastic bottles.  Great price and easy to transport!

The schools that we work with range in size from 100 to 1000 pupils.  The majority have a population of about 400 students.  Most of these schools have 2 cooks to prepare the meals, which consist of a breakfast porridge called “Uji’ and a lunch of ‘Githeri’, made from maize and beans, with green and orange vegetables when available. For many of the children, these may be the only meals they have in a day.

We are piloting this dishwashing program in six schools.  We’ve conducted a training session with all the students in those schools and have asked the schools to keep us informed on the success or challenges with the improvised sinks.