3 weeks left...

It's been an exciting couple of weeks. We still don't have all of the materials, but we've started work on constructing the pieces. So none of the pieces came cut or ready to go (not really surprised I guess), but there are people in the community who have 'equipment' for cutting and welding (I say it that way because I'm 90% sure this is a hodge-podge homemade welding apparatus, sort of just a high voltage box and some twisted together wires...). I ended up redrawing the technical drawings by hand to include the new dimensions of pieces and they have been so helpful with communicating. Without pictures I'm pretty sure this would be impossible. So far we have all the table legs done, and today they are cutting and welding all the remaining pieces. It's a little bit difficult, and they seem to be over complicating it (like in my picture the table is 2m long along the inside edges, but the first one they made was 2m total, so they calculated how long to make it rather then just following my numbers the easy way). We painted all the pieces with rust-proof paint the other day because a lot of them were starting to rust already. Needless to say my hands were covered in the paint, and he insisted on pouring a clear liquid out of a recycled milk jug on them. It was paint thinner. It burned. (So, uh, safety standards are not quite the same here as they are back home..).

We're behind on schedule, but like, I'm pretty sure that no construction projects actually ever go following their desired time line. I'm a little worried we won't finish in time though. We still don't have the plastic, or corrugated metal and stainless steel sheets. But the solar panel got here the other day! And I sent out the required fan details (and a link to it on amazon) the other day to David and Eneyda, so hopefully that works out. (The fan is super important, it needs to match solar panel power, and needs to keep air moving at the desired speed to maintain the desired temperature.) 

We went to a really pretty island over the weekend and that was a nice break from the stress of trying to communicate with the two worker guys. Got to go swimming, and ate so much fresh fruit. I did find out that I am rather sensitive/allergic to the chichicaste plant (essentially like poison ivy), I guess it touched my arm while swimming causing my entire arm to burn and break out in a rash. I'm all fine now, but it's really scary to not understand what is happening.

My hand-drawn technical drawings

Cutting metal...

Welding in the safest way...

Discussing the drawings again and again

The table legs with the brackets

 

Week 5 Update LP

Our translator Jenn left us on Sunday morning :( It was great having her here as a way to increase communication and as someone who is familiar with both Latin American culture and U of M Service Learning! The two weeks she was here flew by and we will miss her help a lot. We spent a relaxing yet rainy weekend in San Salvador with her and were also able to "vamos a la playa" to Playa El Espino again this past Saturday.

As Kassandra mentioned we were able to visit the hardware store while Jenn was here and she helped Kass order parts for the dehydrator. It's unfortunate that the timing didn't work out as we were really hoping to build the dehydrator or at least start it while Jenn was still here. However such is life in El Sal and we likely won't be building it until next week. Conveniently one of our neighbours is a mechanic and is going to help us solder things that need to be soldered and cut metal.

In the meantime I have been working on manuals and resources for food preparation and food safety. I have been lucky enough to contact a Canadian who visited Guatemala a couple of years ago and started a similar project with local farmers and fruit dehydration. He has given me some really helpful advice as well as the manuals they used as instructions for food prep. I've also done some other research into similar projects and even looked at old class notes for food safety information. My task now is to take all the info I've gathered and streamline it so that it can be easily understood and translated. Since literacy may be an issue I am going to make the instructions as simple as possible and locate (or possibly draw?!) some pictures to go along with them. 

This past week has been pretty good. We got a little bit started towards actually doing stuff. The area that the dehydrator is going needed quite a bit of work, so we started to clear the brush, and found people to cut down the trees. We cleared up a spot pretty good, but then it was decided we should put it east-west, not north-south, so that it is in the sunlight for longer (which makes total sense). There's just more work to do now. (The space we cleared will still be used because Oikos wants to install one of those fancy green houses, though.)

We also made the trip down to the hardware store to go over the material list with them. I'm going to be doing quite a bit of improvising, because they had a very small selection of parts available. So all the dimensions of the brackets and diameters of the round bars are different, and the u-profile has been scrapped entirely (will need to find a new way to connect the cover to the base...). I'm still hoping that the legs and roof connectors will be welded before they get here, like they are in the technical drawings I provided, but they may not be. The materials should get here any day now and then I'll have a clearer picture of just how much more work will need to be done. 

We went back to San Salvador for the weekend and stayed in the cute hotel we had stayed at for our first few nights here, which was nice. Unfortunately, it also rained all weekend so we couldn't really utilize the pool. 

Before...

Pulling weeds and removing trees...

Quite a bit more sunlight...

With most of trees cut down...