We finally got everyone together and working around lunch time.
The Reed team was busy showing off their new welded knife and demonstrating it to the delight of the islanders. They were also busy interviewing people to gather information for a potential second run at this project, as well as trying to get their reed whacker to work under water.
The Oven team was busy helping people cut, fold, and rivet ovens trying to get them all complete before we had to leave, knowing that the likelihood that they would get finished after we left was extremely low.
The Washing Machine team was busy demonstrating their idea and discussing its pros and cons with some of the locals.
Whitney and I had just settled into helping the Oven team, when Dr. Lewis approached with a surprise.
It turned out that on the very first day some of the islanders had approached Larissa (one of our two Spanish speaking students) about having us build a pump like Nelsons.
Background: The year before one of the GEO teams had worked on a water pump. You see most of the islanders get the water that they use for washing/cooking/drinking/etc. by dragging up buckets from the side of their islands. So this GEO team designed a pump that sucked up the water from underneath the island and out a convenient hose. Unfortunately, no one remembered how to build the pump and Nelson was the only one who had one, with many people clamoring for one on their island.
So Larissa had talked to Dr. Lewis, who then emailed all of the students from the previous year's team asking for any directions/pictures to help us out. He then handed the emails to us (pictureless, naturally) and asked if we could figure it out and build one by the end of the next day. Whitney and I agreed we would try.
Our first step was to read over the directions, they were as clear as mud.
We then went to talk, via Porter, to Dora about the pump she and Nelson had. Conveniently Dora had a piece of paper with all of the parts listed (in Spanish, which was very good as it turned out). She also let us poke around her pump and proudly showed us how it worked.
We still spent the rest of the day trying to figure out how this ting went together, and just what was on the parts list we had been handed.
Once we returned to the mainland Whitney and I spent our last hour of daylight shopping for parts. After a little exploring we came across the "plumbing" section of the market. It consisted of about 5 shops selling more or less the same things in varying sizes, quantities, and prices. After a little window shopping we settled we found one shop owner at least willing to try and talk with us. So we showed her our list and she happily sold us almost everything on the list. Armed with our purchases, but still not feeling very optimistic, we raced the daylight and got back to the hotel just before dinner.
For dinner we headed out with the Reed cutting group, and sat in on their team dinner offering our always helpful suggestions. Really though we won, because we convinced Porter that he NEEDED to come shopping with us the next day, to help us get the rest of our parts.
Following dinner we did a little souvenir shopping, in shops that seemed impossibly small from the street but opened up into amazing shops with almost everything available. Armed with our latest purchases, and feeling better as only women can after shopping for clothes, we headed home to sleep before our last big day.
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