We arrived in Guatemala Sat. Feb 21st. The University of Michigan BLUELab team was held up in Miami overnight so we arranged to pick them up directly from the Guatemala City Airport on Sunday and head directly to Quetzaltenango (Xela, pronounced Shay-la, to the locals).
The BLUELab has designed a very efficient and low cost treadle pump for use by rural farmers. Our project here is to check out the constructability of the design in the field using locally available materials. Already this process has produced very valuable information on how to design for construction in the developing world.
We got to Xela Sunday night. The BLUELab team got a chance to see the Parque Central area of Xela and we stopped in at El Balcon in Pasaje Enrique to look out over Parque Central and much of Xela. The night sky was mostly clear and we could see the volcanic peaks that surround the city in the distance.
Monday we found out that we couldn’t start work at the AIDG workshop till the PM so we organized teams who will work on sub-assemblies and review the build process. When Jose Ordonez arrived from AIDG several of us took off in the AIDG pickup truck to purchase materials.
Jose doesn’t drive so Ben Connor Barrie took the honors which ended up with Ben driving in rush hour traffic with 6 meter lengths of steel on the roof and students riding in the back. Ben managed to merge into a packed and fast moving round-about and get out at the right exit while taking directions in Spanish.
The build is now under way with the teams working through a few local condition induced design changes.
Photos to follow.
jsb
