Thursday, July 31, 2008

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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