Appropriate Technology Workshop Part 4

Well, I just want to say that there are fantastic pictures related to this post, but I don't have them. I'm hoping to get some copies of them in the coming weeks, so I'll be sure to share them as soon as I do. Also, I want to apologize for the fact that I'm still posting stories from December. I have a few more before I move on to my adventures from January (I've got a bunch of those as well). Hopefully I can start telling stories as they happen again soon-ish.

Anyway, the weather had been mostly co-operative during our time in Zambia, but we knew that we were there at the start of the rainy season (which was fortunate in that it provided us with an ample bounty of mangoes) and had to be ready in case the skies opened up and deluged the town as they are wont to do in that part of Zambia. Sure enough, starting with the second day, we had a lot of moving around as we tried to work in spite of the rain. It was mostly successful, but definitely complicated things a bit.

Day 2 had one of my favorite presentations where Amy was showing how a design for a honey press might evolve and Bernard just put together a few cardboard contraptions to show people how to do very simple designs to evaluate concepts. We were having more discussions on the second day and although half the participants were Peace Corps Volunteers while the other half were counterparts from the villages where the volunteers were stationed, much more than half of the substance was coming from the volunteers. I even led a session that went much better than my previous one (still with a few fits and starts, but barely noticeable to the audience) and felt a lot better about that.

The really interesting part of day 2 was during the end of the lunch break when Amy wanted to test out a well-digging method that only uses metal pipes and water. Kofi suggested that we should probably wait, but Amy went ahead with it. Step 1 was learning how to draw water up a pipe using your hand using a basin (you bring the pipe up and down with your hand over the top with a suction grip allowing air out slowly, which draws water in from the basin). We all really enjoyed this and set up two adjacent basins so that people could have water fights as the water sprayed all over once it reached the top. After that, we moved on to step 2, which consisted of doing the process in the same way, but instead of a basin filled with water, it was a small hole. In this sense, we were using a lot more force to draw water up the pipe and bring mud with it. However, we were all taking turns and spraying and the mud was flying everywhere. In order to create enough force on the pipe, we needed to have 3 people helping lift it and the person whose hand was acting as a seal got some pretty nasty blisters on their palm. As we got deeper, we attached more pipes (the pipes were threaded so that we could put more on) and had more people helping with it. At the 7 meter depth, we had 5 people working on the pipe and with all the mud spraying, we were all indistinguishable mud monsters. Everyone took lots of pictures. I offered hugs to several people who opted to stand a safe distance away and watch, but they all declined. I felt bad for some of the Zambians who had coated some of their best clothes in mud, but they didn't seem to regret it at all. Everyone who had participated just had the biggest smiles on their faces and probably would have dug all afternoon if we didn't have several other projects to work on. One man named Martin showed particular enthusiasm for the method and we were all predicting that if we visited his village after one month, we would find dozens of new wells dug everywhere. (I promise to post the pictures up here as soon as I get them.)

We also had some technology demonstrations in the afternoon. I was showing the oil presses, so the wonderful housekeeper Esther roasted some peanuts and sunflower seeds for me (I had gone to the market with David and gotten much better prices the 2nd time around) so that we could extract peanut and sunflower oil. One of the people who was hosting us had assured us that he could get all the supplies we needed like peanuts and sunflower seeds and kept assuring us that it would be just one more day. When it came down to the wire we finally just bought our supplies, but it meant that we hadn't tested the machines before using them. I had used similar ones three years before, so I was hoping it was like riding a bicycle. Turns out that it wasn't. Neither press really worked (the yenga press and screw press from this post) and were pretty underwhelming for the participants. It was nice that everyone started trying to tinker with it to make it work, which really drove home to me the importance of a good oil press, but mostly it served to highlight some of the flaws in the design and to chastise me again for not practicing before presenting.

Still, it was nice to see all the technologies coming along nicely. After we cleaned up for the day, the volunteers cooked vegetarian stir-fry for us, which was delicious, and it was fun to hang out and talk about experiences in Peace Corps and life in general. It was also nice to be eating multiple complete meals in a day again. Sadly, it also made me realize how much I miss cooking as a way to unwind.