Community

Yesterday, Leticia, Irene, Lynette, and Steven went to four of the clusters to distribute MOU´s, explain their purpose and talk to neighbors. The household that the tank is on is responsible for getting the signatures of all the cluster members. On Monday we asked the households and everyone interested in the cluster to visit our tank prototypes. We will load them with water and show them the models and see their opinions and concerns.

Katelyn and Scott worked on creating a Harold pump as another alternative and jerryrigged a charcoal press. The Harold pump worked, though the strokes required to pull water were prohibitively long; we still think the enhanced inertia pump is our best bet. We also conducted a burn of maize cobs, leaves, and stalks. Even though the fire consumed all of the materials, the cobs did not carbonize fully and do not seem to be the best option for us. Of all the materials we have carbonized, banana and matooke leaves are best. The dead leaves are plentiful on the ground and hanging off of trees, burn easily, and created a perfect carbonized "dust."

Around noon, the entire EWB team was walking the village and got caught in a true African rainy season torrential downpour. Most people ducked under a roof or tree to wait it out and one person made a mad dash back to the clinic. Regardless of which choice was made, everyone arrived back soaked.

During the afternoon, Steven and Leticia worked on documentation and the 522 while Katelyn pressed charcoal. Despite the feedback that we had received about matooke and banana peels being used to feed cattle, goats, and pigs, we used matooke peels (scraping the sticky side off) as a binder. Not all households have these animals, and even when the sticky side is scraped off, the peel can still be used as feed. However, the matooke peels are very green and the "sticky" side is actually not that sticky. It can barely hold the briquette toghether. We also tried cutting open not yet ripe jackfruit and using the very sticky syrup as a binder, but the syrup produced was not even enough for one briquette. It seems that jackfruit has only enough stickiness to make your hands stick toghether. The barriers of prohibitive cost of making the charcoal press and the issues with binders means that the implementation of the charcoal project in Ddegeya may be difficult.

In the evening, the EWB team went to Eddie´s cluster to talk about the tanks and receive signature on the MOU. Everyone signed the MOU, but one neighbor (Eddie´s grandmother, in fact) raised some issues. Her home is located halfway between Eddie´s and Muchala Muwanika´s homes and she is elderly and claims to be without children much of the year. Her roof is larger. One option is to build a larger tank at her home for the neighbors of Eddie and Muchala Muwanika. Some members of Ddgeya have raised the issue that Muchala Muwanika does not have many neighbors, in fact her next door neighbor already has an extensive tank system. However, politics plays a huge role in the placement of the tanks. Muchala Mwanika is an outspoken member of the waterboard and has been a great friend to EWB, housing travelers in the past. The tanks must be community driven, and if the residents of Ddegeya and the waterboard are less receptive to the tanks, the implemetation may be more difficult.