Professor Craig would be so proud

Our second day in Haiti wasn't nearly as full as our first, but we've accomplished quite a bit. We spent much of the morning in the second story of the factory where the peanuts are ground, mixed with other ingredients, and packaged. This area is not at all what I expected it to be--the place is quite sterile. In order to enter, we had to take off our shoes, put bright blue plastic booties over our feet and don white hair nets. Inside, in addition to the booties and hair nets, all of the workers wear blue scrubs turned inside out with white aprons on top. The two supervisors wear blue lab coats, just like supervising doctors.

We wanted to get an idea of the existing maintenance practices in the factory, so we talked with a factory worker at the grinders and the mixers. With the help of Katy (or Kahti, as the Haitians call her), who translated for us, we talked with the workers about what they do each day.

We also spent a couple hours drawing up plans for the solar dryer. I got a research grant to design a new solar dryer, build a prototype in St. Louis, test the prototype, and draw up detailed plans to be distributed through networks such as ECHO and places like MFK. After much discussion, I sketched the plan (putting my CAD skills learned last semester to good use!) and talked it over (once again with help from Katy) with Eddie the carpenter boss (boss is a term of reverence for any skilled laborer). We later talked it over with Jamie R, the operations manager at the factory, and Eddie as well.

Tomorrow we're going shopping for all the materials for the dryer. I'm really excited to go shopping--seeing different stores, driving around Cap Haitien, and seeing Eddie and Jamie haggle with the sales people. The city is just so vibrant, with people, chickens, motos, music, and brightly painted signs everywhere.
Here's a picture of people all along the road. It's like this all over. This isn't the greatest picture, but its a nice view of the mountain.



I just love all these new experiences. Communicating the dryer design to Eddie, who speaks mostly Creole, through Katy, who only speaks French and also unfamiliar with my design, was quite a challenge. I was very pleased, though, when we were able to work things out, with much use of pictures, hand gestures, pointing, and a handy English-French dictionary.

Here's a picture of Cory and me taken by our third travel companion, Robin, a Chemical Engineering professor, sitting outside the Cap Haitien airport. We were attracting a lot of attention without the camera, but Robin couldn't resist when a rooster walked right up to us.