Filter Design

It's been almost a week since I've written anything. I guess that last entry took a lot out of me. Thanks for all the comments and encouragement that you gave. It is great to know that other people have been thinking and asking similar questions to the ones I brought up.

So, last Sunday Chris, Leslie, Olivia and I went to Dave and Judy's. We met the ex-managers of Club Indigo and another missionary couple that work in Port. It was great meeting more people and we had a huge lunch/dinner. One of the main dishes was dove....which I didn't know people really ate, but learned that the French apparently eat small birds...including doves. I have to admit it was pretty delicious, but it takes quite a few to get a fair amount of meat.

This week I have been taking a break from the manual labor and am renewing my skills with computer design work. I have been updating the drawings for the biosand filters for a couple reasons. The first is that we are producing filters that we don't have a formal set of drawings for. Chris and another guy that helped out at Clean Water for Haiti, Otto, redesigned the filter to save weight a while ago and we've been using this as the new standard. The second is that once I create the drawings, we are going to see if the sheet metal used to construct the molds can be cut in Port-au-Prince with a press. Currently we plasma cut the pieces and then have to do a fair amount of grinding to get everything within tolerance before we weld. If we can get them cut with a machine, it will save us a lot of time and should help us produce more consistent filter molds. Hopefully they can do it, and at a reasonable cost. Here is what I've come up with so far...

Biosand Filter Mold

On Wednesday, Chris and I went to Port and got some supplies. We stopped by the Toyota dealer and checked on the van that CWH ordered at the beginning of the year. They said that Toyota hadn't been shipping what they promised and it was going to be at least mid-September before we would probably see anything. They also mentioned that we wouldn't be getting the white color we had ordered....it may be grey or silver. You can't be too picky here though, or you'll end up never receiving anything. After that we headed to the airport and waited for Leslie's aunt to arrive. Her flight was only delayed by 30 minutes, but then it took another hour and a half before we saw here come out past security. It gets pretty hot waiting outside the airport where the the shade is limited and the people are many.

The left portion of the dorm has been finished and just in time with Leslie's aunt arriving. She is staying out there and everything seams to be working out well. After she heads back home, I'll be moving out to the dorm and giving Olivia her room back in the house. I don't have any pictures of it now, but I'll take a few once I've moved in to show how everything has turned out.

Yesterday after dinner I climbed one of the coconut trees in our yard and stripped it of all the decently sized coconuts. I had never eaten one straight off the tree before, so that was another first I've experienced here. We used a machete and cut the tops off, poured the water out into a jug, and then split it in half to eat the flesh.

Half a Coconut

Chris Cutting A Coconut