Wednesday, January 25, 2012

On Saturday Julianne fell ill and was out of commission up until today. Erica stayed with her the first day while the rest of us visited the King of Bandjoun upon the Mayor's invitation. His place was pretty impressive and we discussed the potential for a solar water pumping system that he may be able to implement for his area and some farms far out in the countryside. The trip there was basically a safari (without animals) and twas not for the weak of stomach. On the trip back we had a little car trouble and realized we lost the majority of our day but we rallied upon Dr. Steve's touching story of a book he once read and upon finding the legendary D'jino (a grapefruit like soda).

The next day we mounted the solar panels on the rack. The rack shifted upon settling in the concrete and our bolt holes no longer lined up. With a bit of retrofitting we were able to successfully mount each solar module and they looked beautiful in the end, shimmering in the late afternoon African sun. During some of the down time, Kim gave a group of children toy styrofoam airplanes and they absolutely loved them. We also got a chance to see Felix's famous plumbing skills.

Monday (Sal's Birthday!) we wired the control box for the solar array, installed the float switch and realized that all of our wiring connections going up to the reservoir were faulty =(. We redid half for the remainder of the day and had to push back our return to Yaunde for another day. Then (bum bum bummm) when we came back tomorrow we found that all but on of the remaining connections were good! Everything seemed to turn from there and started working. Mission Complete. It was such a joyous occasion that all the kids that amassed by our station tried to keep us from leaving by holding the doors to the car open.

We traveled back to Yaunde on Wednesday morning and are currently finishing up some last minute errands before out flight departs late tonight. Hopefully, some pictures will be posted in the meantime. Can't wait to be back in the good ol' USA!

Anthony

2 comments:

Rocco said...

That's what engineers do, solve problems, (even the ones they create!) Glad things are going well, can't wait to hear the nitty gritty details. Safe trip home!

Rocco

Taylor said...

"and they looked beautiful in teh end, shimmering in the late afternoon African sun..."

what a poet Anthony!