Living with the Faeces

Trading faeces has been three-generation occupation for the Astha Kumari Khadka (48)’s family. Living in Phaika in the suburbs of Kathmandu, the Khadka family has been raising the funds for it’s livelihood through selling faeces of their cattle. “It’s a double shot,” says Homnath Khadka (53), husband and care taker of Astha Kumari’s cattle, “we sell the milk and have been able to raise some money selling the faeces too.”

The faeces the Khadka family sells is generally bought by local farmers who say it’s an excellent source for fertility booster. “Buying chemical boosters are expensive, but since cow dung is cheap and accessible, we’ve been using it for ages. And I must tell you it works wonders.” The farmers in Nepal have been using the traditional methods of agriculture since ages and changeover to modern means of agriculture is expensive and undesired in this poverty stricken country where more that 83% of the population survives through primitive means of agriculture.

“We have three cows, a mother and her two calves” says Astha Kumari, “we have enough of milk to sell when a new calf is born. But as the calf grows up, the amount of milk the mother gives isn’t sufficient to sell and we do not have enough money to raise more than one cow at a time, so the only means of making some money is by selling what we already have – and all that we have in our disposal when we have no milk is, of course, the faeces.”

Astha Kumari has just sold the faces piled up since last December and received a handsome 300 rupees ( ~ $4) from the barter. She says she’ll be buying some stocks for the kitchen and spend some money on distemper shot for the two four month old calfs. And when enough faeces have gathered, she will be selling them again, perhaps around next September – just weeks before the largest Hindu festival begins.