Saturday, October 26, 2013

Today was a total success. Zac, Doug, and Steven took a tap-tap to the market and managed to buy everything we needed, from additional cabinet hardware to some tools. All of these cost us 680 goudes, or about$15. As we were leaving the hardware store, a Haitian mounted about four 12 ft long pieces of lumber on either side of his motorbike, fastening them to the frame so they wouldn’t fall off. The only thing unusual with this arrangement, is that they stuck out in front on either side of his front wheel, thus not allowing any sudden turns. We know have a tie as to the oddest load on a motorbike. The other contender is someone dragging 30 ft pieces of steel rebar behind him. The ends swayed back and forth a good 3 feet. Horn blaring, he was headed up the road.!

Meanwhile Steve and James went to a Saturday morning Kids Club that James and a few other adults sponsor where they provide a place for adolescents to learn life skills. A real labor of love. Some of the clothes that we brought were distributed as well.

This afternoon Steve completed the modifications to all 12 of the classmates – they are now ready to give to the various schools, and Zac, Doug, Gabriel, Steven, and James ganged up on the two almost completed solar power systems, inventing a way to hold the box onto the cart, providing air holes for the potentially overheating solar controller, adding legs on either side of the array to hold it in an inclined position point sort of at the sun, and a number of cleanup tasks. We did a final "proof in the pudding" test and found out that one must connect the red/positive clip lead to the positive terminal and the black/negative to the negative terminal and that to do otherwise leads to a blown fuse. We think we can replace the fuse, so this falls into the no harm no foul column. But our local helpers are now very conscious of connecting the battery correctly.

Tonight’s discussion centered on life’s spiritual progression using a baseball diamond and its 4 bases as a metaphor for a four stage progression towards God. Again, very interesting discussions were had.