Tech Week Blog Post #2

Over the course of tech week we learned a variety of tech skills including:

-How to survey waterlines using abney levels and water levels
-How to build bases for latrines with logs and bamboo frames
-How to mix concrete
-How to mold seats for latrines
-How to haul water from the river
-How to form rebar frames for inside concrete structures
-How to hike like it's your job
-How to form things with mud and chicken wire (the theatre kids were really good at this)
-How to construct things out of ferrocement
-How to measure the flow of a waterline
-How to use thermodynamics (that means how to melt PVC pipes down to make other things with them, like flow reducers, caps, and orifice plates)
-How to effectively use a trowel
-How to dig with a Panamanian shovel (IE, the handle is 3' long)
-How to give a presentation to a group of adults about gender equality in a strongly male dominated indigenous society as the only female in a group of 4 other male presenters (It's not intimidating. Not at all. Especially not when the men in the audience insist gender equality is not a problem in their community.)
-How to swing dance. (When there's 7 girls and 18 guys, the girls have no option then it comes to who's dancing for the cultural presentation. Even if they have no idea how to swing dance!)
-How to shower with a pitcher's worth of water in a space with tarp walls that come up to just below the bra line.
-How to mask the taste of iodine when using iodine tablets to purify your water because it came from a sketchy source (limes)
-How to wash your hair in a thunderstorm (the trick is finding good runoff from a palm leaf)
-How to eat anything on your plate without realizing what it really is, tasting as little as possible, and without invoking the gag reflex (It's all about speed. Just get it to the stomach before your body realizes what's happening)
-How to ration an ipod battery to last for 8 days
-How important it is to maintain a sense of humor

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