Washing Machine!

Somehow this washing machine project is eating up every last second that I seem to have, so I haven't had a chance to resize any of the pictures from the last two days. In brief, here's the rundown:

• On Tuesday, Aaron and I met with Indira from PA Nepal, to talk about her goals for the project and to see what she hopes we'll be able to accomplish

• On Wednesday, Aaron and I biked up to Sakhu--where the machine will be located--to do a site visit and meet the kids (Jagat, Agreni, Jivan) who will be helping us build it. This became a design session that was really successful--when we had the kids draw basic plans for their machines, for instance, all of them included water inputs and outputs, even though we hadn't talked about that in our "design parameters" (and we certainly didn't use that term!). Hopefully I remember more about this to give a lengthier report when construction is finished.

• Yesterday we spent most of the day sourcing parts--iron and steel tubes, bearings, barrels, and so forth. There are some pretty pictures on my personal blog, but in general it was more stressful than it needed to be.

• This morning, as I write this, Aaron has been fabricating some of the pieces, so that the kids do the majority of the assembly and all the fitting and difficult machine work is done for them. I had a Nepali lesson this morning, have been doing my best to catch up on all the organizing work I continue to have to do while this project goes on--a task that is more difficult than it sounds--and class with RugMark this afternoon, then up to Sakhu to do a little building tonight and a lot tomorrow (all day).

Pictures soon!

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The advance cavalry arrives!

No pictures yet, but my good friend Aaron arrived at Tribhuvan International Airport on Sunday after 6 weeks in Ladakh. He was working with a Canadian NGO called Design for Development, in partnership with the Ladakh NGO Health Inc. 

Suffice it to say that Aaron is way more qualified to do what I'm doing than I am, but that of course puts him in pretty good demand--the first night he was in town he showed my pictures of the inclusive swingset he designed and built in Ladakh that allows kids who can't pump their legs to swing as long as someone else swings next to them, and he spent a year with BEN in Namibia building bicycle ambulances.

And the Wrench Nepal news is: We're going to spend the next 2 weeks building a pedal-powered washing machine for the P.A. Nepal house in Sakhu!

This might end up being the highlight of my trip out here.

Suresh fixing a wheel, in class with RugMark

A tika for Teacher's Day

Last Friday was Teacher's Day in Nepal--I think a Hindu holiday, but I'm uncertain--and after class (fixing flats and adjusting hubs) finished at 5 the kids asked if I knew (I didn't) and if I wanted to celebrate (why not?).

I followed Shyam--who's 18, just passed his SLC, and whose job it is to translate any of the more difficult explanations into Nepali, and to write Nepali terms on the board--up to the 3rd floor of the hostel building, where we sat in a big empty room with a single bench. There I was dusted with flower petals and had a tika applied to my forehead, and was presented with my ritual gift of a cup of Coca-cola, a couple of bananas, and some of the mildly spicy Nepali snack food that I still don't know the same of.

And then we talked about how to get visas to go to the US, which most of these kids will have extreme difficulty obtaining because there's not a lot to hold them to Nepal...but that's a discussion for another time.

How to true a wheel, Nepali-style

I went yesterday to a "real" (i.e. retail) bike shop to get a chain--I twisted a link on my way to visit some friends (of mine, of Tom's, and of the shop's) and I needed one anyway for the kids at P.A.--whose class started before RugMark's--to practice taking apart and putting together. 

It was raining when I got to the shop, so the guys inside invited me to sit down and wait it out, which I did, happily. I'm beginning to develop a sense here of which storms will last 20 or 30 minutes and which ones will last all day, and this looked like a passing shower. One of the big signs is when the rain starts; similar to living in the Midwest during thunderstorm season, you get a lot of afternoon showers that clear by nightfall, but if it starts in the morning it will probably go all day.

In any case, the shop had a bunch of Nepalis in it, probably 5 or 6, plus me, which made for a lot of cheerful squeezing back and forth in dim light between gray metal shelves stacked haphazardly with greasy bicycle pieces, mostly held in plastic bags ripped open. The only kid working--probably no more than 19--was working on a wheel with a pretty good hop in it, which had a couple of broken spokes.

First he replaced the spokes, which actually took a good bit of time--the wheel was 4-cross and had probably 40 or 44 spokes. That's a lot, more than you need, and (as an aside) from everything I've read 3-cross is actually stronger. The kid kinked the spokes a little finagling them into place, but while I think I probably could have kinked them less, getting them in without any kinks at all would be really, really hard. He put them in the right place--over  and under the other spokes correctly--though.

He then gave them a good initial tightening and put the wheel into the truing stand, which in Nepal is a contraption without the caliper arms at the bottom that American/European stands usually have. Instead you get 4 legs , with an old spoke twisted around one pair--it's this spoke you move up and down to judge whether the wheel is true. The mechanic at the shop actually just put his thumb on the bent spoke so that the wheel grazed his nail, and used that to determine lateral true. (Radial true, with this tool, is pretty easy.) He found the spot he want to work on, determined the length of the hop, and marked it with a finger.

Then he picked up a metal mallet with one hand and then a sledge with the other, and bracing the sledge against the rim, hammered it back into true.

After he had done that a couple of times he checked the spoke tension with his fingers, and tightened the spokes that had become loose with his hammering. He continued for a few more spots on the wheel, but it had stopped raining and I paid for the chain (200 Rs., about $3 USD) and walked back home.

A Vocabulary Lesson

Because most of the kids in WN's two RugMark classes speak pretty marginal English, Ghanshyam and Rejina--my contacts there--asked that we make sure that the kids know how to fix the Indian and Chinese bicycles most common here, so they have, perhaps, job opportunities in non-tourist shops.

Part of that, I figured, was learning the Nepali names for bicycle parts. Here's the vocab from this week's lesson:

English name/Nepali name (pronunciation)

Tire/Tire
Tube/Tube
Rim/Rim
Hub/Hub
Axle/Laath (LAHT-h) 
Cone/Cones (COHN-ess)
Lockring/Wasaar (WASS-ar)
Bearing/Bearing
Spoke/Spoke or Espoke (ESS-poke)
Valve/Baltu (BALL-tu)

Guess what we were learning about this week!

(All Nepali crudely transliterated by me, of course).

The boring part of the job

So somehow getting the website cobbled together as an accurate reflection of what I'm actually doing has taken me the better part of a week—mostly getting the words right (or wrong, depending...) but also more frustrating issues like unruly colors and realizing that I had been inserting the Wrench Nepal logo in place of the title of the page, which meant that any link you clicked was a weird computerized crapshoot to any other page on the Wrench Nepal website, since all of them had the same name: -.html.

I think all that sort of thing is fixed now, but honestly, I like fixing bikes, not computers. There's just more satisfaction in jobs you do with your hands.

You should see the changes in the next couple of days, once Tom has agreed that I'm not embarrassing the both of us. And when all the updates go live (volunteer page! a revised "What is Wrench Nepal"! Oh my!) I'll also send out the broader solicitation email looking for new staff.
The goal is to get at least two people, after all.

New faces wanted!

It's weird to be already recruiting a replacement, since it feels like I shouldn't have to quite yet. But that's Nepal, and the reality of the whole 150-days-in-a-calendar-year visa system.

Anyway, here's the email I sent today to the list of folks who'd expressed interest already in coming out to WN. Unfortunately internet issues in Nepal continue and all of my links (to the WN homepage, and to this blog) were stripped out when I received the email back. Eh, that's Nepal, but it's little things like the ease of access (being able to click rather than having to type wrenchnepal.com) that make a big difference in rather tenuous activities like recruitment.

Hello everyone!

This email goes out to everyone who's expressed interest in working with Wrench Nepal. We'd love to have you work in Kathmandu!

Wrench Nepal continues to teach bike repair to some of the most disadvantaged kids in the Kathmandu Valley, though our methods have changed a little from our founding--we currently parter with local, Nepali-run NGOs, which are our kids' primary social support. (More info about these changes at the Wrench Nepal blog.) One NGO rehabilitates former child laborers and girls who have been trafficked; the other provides schooling and opportunity for the children of the incarcerated, who (in true Dickensian fashion) would otherwise be in prison with their parents, despite committing no crime. For a variety of reasons, these kids are caught in a trap of poverty that we are trying to free them from.

You'll be arriving at a really exciting time for the shop--a time when we embark on uses for the basic bike repair skills that the kids have learned in the trainings I've taught. This can be in the old repair shop, might be making bike-machines a la Mayapedal, or something else--anything else--that you're excited about. Or even all three!

We're hoping to get at least one person out here as soon as possible, and at least two within the next two months. In addition, anyone who comes before September can stay at my apartment until then for free--bed and all. Yeah, it's a bribe, but we're not above that.

You should have:

- Working knowledge of basic bike mechanics
- Good communication and organizing skills
- Willingness to live in a foreign environment and work with people
from a very different culture

Wrench Nepal continues as an all-volunteer program ,but the cost of living is very low here, with rent in a comfortable place at times as little as $50 per month--my own rent is about $68, and about $74 with utilities, and I didn't look very hard. Volunteers can also pursue part-time paid work to support themselves while here.

If you'd like to come, please send a brief resume to me at mario@wrenchnepal.org. Make sure to highlight your experience working with bicycles and working in community organizing positions.

Thanks, and I hope to hear from you very soon!

Mario Bruzzone
Wrench Nepal
mario@wrenchnepal.org

I'm looking forward to class with RugMark on Friday!