Monday, August 4, 2014

A crafty cucumber


So we had a full week out in the field known as "Tech Week." A fascinating week, it was filled with learning about the contruction of our projects, working in the field, and awkward stares from locals that we were not able to communicate all that well with. We spent the week living with host families in palm thatch huts and eating whatever they cooked us (mostly eggs and yucca and rice, although I got some great smoked chicken twice!). Our days were still classes from 8-5 out in the field learning and practicing techniques or at the local casa comunal receiving charlas (lectures) on the techniques we will use in the future. We surveyed using water levels and abney levels, we built the plancha (floor) for some pit latrines, and we also constructed some ferrocement tanks for biosand filters. It was a very busy week, but also a lot of valuable experience and a lot of fun. It was interesting to live with a host family for a full week by myself in the comarca for the first time. The Ngäbe people definitely are good at staring at you, but while the women of our house did not seem to keen on chatting with me, the dad would gladly talk with me and ask and answer questions. Since we were out in the comarca there were also a lot of gorgeous views at every turn. Tech week was not a good week for creating blog stories though as it was a lot of education. I do have some pictures that may be interesting though! Hope you like them.

              My mosquito net set-up

              My host family's house

Host mom and one of many grand babies 

            My door is not high clearance

         Coral snake in our pit latrine pit!

                      The plancha

              Our ferrocement tank

            Gorgeous views all around

         Just hangin out in the campo


We also had some free days on the end of tech week, now those were nice! A short post on that to come.

No comments:

Post a Comment