Almost Done!

The past few weeks have been busy. The power went out again for some time, halting the project (it's hard to run a welder on no electricity), but we're back on track now. Jess and I took a bike trip to Tokembere to see our friend Jamie, and we made it home in record time - 12 kilometers in 50 minutes over rough terrain with an average grade of 4%. Run those numbers with a 30 lb. bag, typical specs for a mountain bike and our bodyweights, and the fact we were both wiped at the end of the ride (had to sit down for a half hour), and it looks like we're right up there with the 'healthy men' curve on the human power capability charts. Not bad! I took some pictures on the way down, here's one of my favorites (we followed a rainstorm most of the way there):




The last time I posted we were finally buying the materials for the cart part of the vehicle, and I had worms. Now, Jess has all the same nasty infections I just got over (but she's on the mend), and we're buying the last few bolts and steel needed to turn the cart into something truly unique. Here's a picture of the cart portion of the vehicle from a few days ago:


The guys we've been working with have been amazing, and seem like they're excited to learn about the vehicle. We treated them to peanuts and soda after work one day, and we got to have some more normal conversation with them than usual. Turns out, people have been asking to buy this vehicle or a copy of it since the first days of production a few weeks ago. Apparently the prospects of the vehicle's design are so promising, the people are excited about it without even seeing a picture. I'm happy the guys might have business after I leave, hopefully the final product will have the same effect :)

I've found that I'm to the point now that I can explain things I need to to the guys. Last week, for the first time, I felt like I was helping them solve problems, even in French. Welding together complex 3-dimensional shapes can get really difficult based on the order in which you construct things. Especially when you're trying to be as accurate as possible, it can get to be an interesting puzzle to put together. I felt really good when I was able to help solve some of these ordering puzzles, and talk about the geometry. They started to resort to the jigging on their own, because, in their ownn words, they're finding it easier to use. At least I taught them something :)

I hope to have the vehicle done either Friday or Monday and ready for testing, although I believe at this point I've learned most of what I came here to learn. If we finish it Friday, Jess and I plan to take it to the market (Friday is Meri's market day) and give people rides up the hill with their market bags for free in it (and, of course, let them drive it if they so desire). Seeing the picture that's been in my head and on paper for the last few months turning into a real frame on real wheels in a real Cameroonian garage is really exciting!

Jess and I are getting to the hard part of the trip, where we have to start planning my trip home. It's always really hard to think about leaving - it's just too easy to get used to having her around. Coming home is bittersweet, because while I get to come home to my family (my new nephew rolled over!), running, drinkable water and flushing toilets, I am leaving Jess behind. The one thing we have to look forward to, though is that this is the last time we'll ever have to do this. Is it sad that the prospect of being apart for the next three months seems easy (compared, of coruse, to the five and a half at the beginning of the year)? When I get home, I get to go shopping for reception halls for the wedding! I can't believe that it's only about a year away.

I GOT WORMS! No, seriously.

On Toilets (an Ode to Dysentery)
When one travels to Africa, there is, without a doubt
a phenomenon that, simply put, one cannot do without.
It's the world's quickest weight loss plan, a miracle unsung!
A wond'rous thing of pit latrines, bacteria and dung!

You see, when one consumes some food or drink that's not so pure,
(it's three weeks 'till things take off, so it's hard to be quite sure)
bacillae or amoebas come to live in one's intestine,
and then begins the beauty of this marvelous infection.

It hits you like a freight train in the middle of the night,
with fever, chills and muscle aches - it's sometimes quite a sight!
At first, you think 'Malaria! My brain is gonna swell!'
But then you realize your tummy doesn't feel so well.

The next few days (or sometimes weeks) are spent between the john
and whatever piece of furniture you've chosen to lay on;
a brave man gets outside and does his normal day's routine,
but smarter men venture not far from their own pit latrine.

Oh, Pepto, Tums, Mebendazole!
(Can't take that with alcohol!)
Praziquantel and other tasty drugs!
Worms that make you have to poo!
Giardia and Schisto too!
Why did God create these awful bugs?
Twenty-five pounds later, when you're eating once again,
and after twenty minutes, it's not at the other end,
You can smile at the pounds you've lost off your grande patootie,
In Africa, remember, this is practically one's duty.

...pun absolutely intended.

If it's not self-evident, I've spent the last couple days inside with a case of ankylostomiasis. For those of us who don't know (I sure didn't), that's a parasitic worm that reproduces in the intestines and lays eggs around your body - I've just come top find out it's hookworm. Delicious. The downside is that I have to run to the bathroom every half hour and have lost a pretty substantial amount of water, but hey, I'm dropping weight. I like the way Sam Lightner, Jr. describes it in All Elevations Unknown, as having the upside of a 'Jenny-Craig-on-steroids diet'. Jess, for the second time, took my poo sample to the hospital and brought home some drugs that put me on my back for a couple of days. It's not fun, but it gave me a chance to catch up on some accounting and writing for my ASME article.

The past weeks have been very busy, and very exciting! We purchased all the materials for the vehicle, and are well into production. The production vehicle cost is going to be roughly half my initial estimate! This is very exciting, indeed! Jess and I spent the weekend of the 4th traveling all over the place, mostly by bicycle (roughly 50 miles), and mostly offroad. Next time I'm at the internet, I'll upload a video so you can see what it looks like over here. The mountains are really quite beautiful, but it was likely between 100 and 110 degrees outside during that ride - it made for an exhausting, sweaty trip.

The July 5 ride

To top off our long-awaited return home, our hot, sweaty, hungry, grumpy moods weren't helped when I (the genius), chipping out the bottles of cold water that were frozen solid to the freezer walls, managed to poke several rather large holes in the evaporator of the refrigerator, rendering it totally useless. All this, to find that night I had some sort of stomach bug that turned out to be worms. Awesome.

These things aside, Jess said when she had gone to a meeting in another village a few miles away, the farmers told her about my project (they had heard about it through the grapevine from Douvangar), and said they were really excited to see the results - they didn't realize that her 'mari' is the guy running that project. So, not only are my guys excited, but the farmers are excited too. Looks like a lot of the benchmarking and interviewing payed off, because they're saying if it works, a lot of their basic needs will be met.

Busybusybusy

It's been a busy week so far. Jess and I traveled to Garoua on Sunday, which has its high points and low points - good food, electricity and internet, but a long, cramped voyage both ways. Touristique (the travel agency) pretty much screwed us over because not enough buses were available for all the tickets back to Maroua they had sold for the day - their solution was to cram 42 of us into a 30 passenger bus. Awesome.

On a lighter note, we did see our friends over at Chez Lyna (the restaurant owners we met on the train), and without a word they sent all 6 of us free dessert and gave us a ride back to our hotel in Garoua. They won't be there when Jess and I are passing through in August, but we plan to leave them our email addresses and some pictures of the project.

We also got to watch a thunderstorm roll in as we pulled into Maroua, which made for a beautiful light show. Jess and I had an excellent dinner at the Artisanat restaurant just outside of town (filet de boeuf with crème sauce and potatoes), and got to sleep in an air conditioned room! Yessssss!

This morning, we met with Heifer International, which is excited to work with my project and provide plans and training contact for anyone interested in learning about the vehicle in the future. They also suggested some other local people who would likely be interested in getting involved, so Jess and I will check that out soon too. I can't believe how quickly things are taking off! I'm buying the bicycle for parts today at the market, and if the weather isn't inclement tomorrow, we'll be starting to cut and weld! It's been very hot yesterday and today, so it may rain tomorrow, but we'll see.

We have a full weekend planned, as Friday is July 4 (hey, if I don't get to see firefworks, I'm at least having a burger, even if I have to make the ketchup from scratch), and there is a going-away party for a friend here in Maroua Saturday. We hope to have the vehicle finished in the next few weeks, and spend the end of July and beginning of August testing it and getting feedback from the people in different communities in the area. Exciting stuff.

On a side note, the Larium dreams have been weird and hilarious (thankfully not terrifying at any point yet). Malaria meds can be a bit psychoactive, and cause really vivid, very real dreams - to the extent that you can't tell they're dreams until you wake up. I've dreamt about just about anything, from showering in a restaurant bathroom (odd) to fixing the ever-problematic JJ crimper at Bucyrus Lamp Plant with a new design. Yes, I still dream about work. I suppose it's a sign that I do miss my job that I considered that a good dream, and not a bad one.

At any rate, life is good, and things are progressing nicely. More later.

Rain, Rain Go Away

It amazes me how much we are able to ignore the weather around us in the US. We watch the weather, more often than not, to decide what we should wear for the day, or to see if we need to take our umbrella to the office. Here, it's much different. Whether or not it rained in Douroum this week determines whether we take the long route or the short route home. High winds take the power down on a regular basis. Most importantly, when it rains, everyone stays inside. If I see clouds and hear the winds picking up before a meeting, I know my guys probably won't make it.

Most of the young men I'm working with live in Douvangar, a village about 4 miles down the road. Jess and I met them through a priest she was doing a project with just at the beginning of this week - we were due to meet them at the end of last week, but lo and behold - it rained. As the rainy season sets in, this will be a more regular occurrence (in late July it will rain almost every other day); we'll see how much of a problem it becomes. At any rate, the guys seem very excited about the project, and several sound like they've got some pretty good technical skills. I was happy to learn that someone here in Meri now owns a stick welder! This will make life much easier (stick welding is much stronger than soldering).

Unfortunately, even though I went over the details of my project and what all my equipment was for with the TSA, my bag was still held up for a day for extra security checking. Either in the search or in transit, I lost a good number of fasteners and small machined parts I had made for the modular ergometer, shown in parts below. Dr. Iz seemed to have a similar experience with airport security when he traveled to Europe for a stirling engine conference - sometimes carrying even the simplest of machine parts can get you carted off for some special attention from security officials. Anyways, I digress.

The ergometer, in pieces (minus wheels and a few other parts)

The ergometer is basically like riding a stationary bike (in this case, a recumbent) with a load on the wheels, which comes from two little black generators. These generators can be hooked up to any resistive load, like a light bulb. The higher the wattage of the bulb, the harder it is to pedal. By measuring voltage and current, we can figure out how much power was being put into the pedals. Such testing has only been done with Americans and Europeans in common literature, but these (African) people can manage feats like carrying large amounts of water (I've seen up to 75 lbs.) for miles in unbelievable heat - something an average American or European wouldn't be capable of.

Up until now, Jess has been helping to translate when my French all too commonly falls short. I spent my first day alone on the project two days ago, when our friend Issa (pronounced 'Esau') took me to Maroua with him to show me where I could purchase some parts I would need for the project. We rode his motorcycle to the city (about 25 miles), and he showed me where I could purchase bolts, wrenches, etc. As many times as I've been in Maroua, and as many times as I'm sure I have walked right by the vendor he took me to, I had never seen him. Back in a little corner of the Grand Marche (a big open-air market), there sits a shop with nuts and bolts of every size....in metric. I built the ergometer using English sizes. Lesson learned.

At any rate, I spent the day with Issa, trying to communicate as best I could. It's interesting that I have no problem understanding conversations - just the other day I was talking about politics to Jamie's friend Matthias - but when the talk gets technical, and a single missed word can change the entire meaning of the sentence, I have to concentrate much harder. Usually I find myself asking someone to repeat themselves quite a bit, because I want to make sure I understand precisely, and then it takes me another 20 seconds to formulate my response...it makes for some awkward pauses. In the end, I got what I needed for a good price and made it home with some sense of accomplishment, only to discover that I forgot to put on sunscreen...boy is my face red (pun absolutely intended).

We had our first real project meeting yesterday, and the three guys that Jess and I met last week have already increased to five. I was on my own again, as Jess had some work to do out in a field, but the meeting seemed to go really well. For the umpteenth time, I find myself learning more than those I'm supposed to be teaching. That's one of the things I love about this work - I have several years of practial experience and about six years of higher education under my belt, and I still have so very much to learn - even (especially?) from some high school grads who can't speak English. My guys are pictured below: Lamamsa, Jean, Jacques, Rigobert and Jeremi.

My guys from Douvangar

First Week in Village - Protocol

Finally unpacking our things in village, we came to find that the power had been out for nearly a week, expected to come back on at any day. In total, the power was out for 8 days, which made it very difficult to sleep at night (temperatures have been up in the 90's at night), and shut down the mill for the local people, not to mention making work after dark nearly impossible. It certainly highlighted the fact that we only get 12 hours of daylight here, as Jess and I spent several hours reading by candlelight until it was late enough to try and sleep each night.



Whenever I come to the village, it is customary to do what is referred to here by 'protocol'. Remember, Africans are big on introductions and welcoming visitors. Protocol involves visiting the local officials and friends, to greet them on my return to the village. Several days are spent merely greeting people, discussing how they and their families are doing, explaining the details of my project, and how it is to be carried out, etc. We visited the Sous-Prefet (the government's envoy to the village), the mayor, his family, local priests and market keepers, several other workers at the sous-prefecture, the gendarme commandant (the local commandant is actually very nice and upright) and our friends around the village. This process takes days.



We also met with three of the young men I'll be working with to construct the vehicle. They're finishing up exams this week, and we'll be ready to start going over the design and buying materials next week. They all seem excited to be a part of the project, and I'm excited to make the a part of it. When I present my results to the NGO in Maroua, these young men will have some marketable skills to offer - if anyone should want to construct such a vehicle, not only is it possible, but they've got local experts on the subject. I think this will play out nicely for all involved.



Two nights ago, there was an uproar across the village as the power came back on. It's amazing how much easier it makes life when one has access to electricity - the fridge is on! We can open the jelly! We can have COLD water! We can turn on the fan, and we can cook after dark! This is great!



All together, things are off to a nice start, after a rocky trip home. I've put in my cv for consideration by the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University of Denver for a Ph.D. position in biomechanics research - Jess is interested in an intercultural/international communications master's program there, and we may be headed there as early as Spring '09, if I get the position with them. We'll see how things turn out.

Return to Meri and The Trip From Hell

We finally arrived home after traveling for 7 days. We had, at that point traveled by plane, train, bus, bush taxi, car, motorcycle, and foot over a distance that would, in the United States, take less than eight hours to drive (less the 7000 miles covered in the lane, of course). So, after much ado, we have finally made it back home to Meri. Air France managed to misplace one of my bags (the one with all the metal, bolts and wires in it - if a bag was going to get left behind, likely for extra inspection, I figured it would be this one). Thanks to that, we had to spend an extra day in Yaounde and 4 hours at an empty airport waiting for the customs worker with the key to get to my bag. We finally boarded the train to Nagoundere that evening, and headed north.



Thankfully, the train went without issue, ,and we met a really nice married couple who shared our sleeper cabin. The woman was a former agricultural worker and her husband a lawyer, both from Garoua. The wife, Lyna, now runs a restaurant a bit off the beaten path on the outskirts of Garoua, which has an extensive menu with some excellent food on it. They invited us to eat there the following evening at 8, and we gladly accepted. We got on a bus that made the trip from Nagoundere to Garoua in pretty good time (about 5 hours), although there was a kid just behind Jess and I that threw up pretty much the whole trip.

Oddly enough, the couple we met picked us up in their car at our hotel (only very rich people here have cars), and drove us to the restaurant, where Jess and I had probably the biggest meal since we arrived. With roast chicken and beef, fries, pineapple, mango, and various other treats, we had a wonderful dinner with the couple, and when we went to pay, they wouldn't let us. This was not a cheap meal! Jess and I agreed we should eat there the next time we're in Garoua and pay for a large meal.

From there, we left for Maroua again by bus with Touristique, the Greyhound of Cameroon. This trip was a lot longer than it should have been (should have taken three hours, but took five and a half), and Jess and I were pretty much totally exhausted when we finally got to Maroua. Yet again, one of my bags was lost on the way, and we spent another several hours setting up someone to pick up the wheels of my makeshift ergometer when it would arrive the next day. We spent the night at the Case (the Peace Corps crash pad, if you will), and took the bush taxi home the next day.

Of course, it wouldn't be the trip from hell unless we got accosted by crooked Gendarmes on the way, so at both possible places to be pulled over, the bush taxi was stopped and we were asked for our papers. At the second stop, the gendarme not only asked to see my passport and visa (which is all the need), he asked to see my airline ticket and any other documents he could think to require, lest I be forced to pay the 2800 CFA fine (about 5 dollars), which he invented on the spot. We sat and argued with him until he realized we were about to phone our embassy, at which point he finally let us go. This is probably my least favorite part of traveling in areas like this - police have a lot of power, and are typically corrupt to the extent of such extortion. We finally made it to Meri that afternoon, exhausted from the trip.

Arrival

So, we've arrived in Yaoundé safe and sound, albeit after a long trip. We'll have to stay here at least until tuesday morning, because one of my bags (containing several months of machining work in bike parts) managed to not make it here - we think it got stuck in Paris. The flights went without a hitch, but the airport staff at CDG were, as expected, totally French (i.e.:totally unhelpful with our short connection). After a lot of funny looks from security at the bike wheels I was carrying and many hours spent asleep in the air (awake for Jess), here we are.

Jess has always said the people in the south are a lot more aggressive - she's right. We basically had three guys standing around us in the airport demanding 50 dollars because they 'helped us' (they hadn't done anything). It took a lot of nasty looks and shoving through them to get outside the airport and into a taxi. After all that, the hotel and pizza for dinner was awfully nice.

The weather down here is cool and really humid. The city reminds me a bit of Accra (in Ghana), although it seems a little less developed. We're enjoying the electricity and internet!

Later.