Productive

Yesterday was an especially busy day!

After breakfast in the morning, we hurried and started peeling sweet potatoes ('batata' in Chichewa). While Emily and I were using the extremely nice peelers that one of our professors, Dr. Johnston, was able to bring with him for us (among many other things for our research), Renee finished up making the brines, and John started to use the mandoline so that we could have consistently thick slices.
We allowed the slices to soak in the brine when we were all done with slicing and weighing.

Next stop, fixing the solar dryer.
Unfortunately, the solar dryer was in poor condition when we arrived. The corners needed caulking within the solar dryer so that heat wouldn't escape as fast. Also, the door to place the racks of samples would not close completely allowing heat to escape as well. Not only that, but the chimney directing the heat to escape broke off.
The mission: Fix it all before the sweet potatoes were done soaking. Meaning 2 hours time.
We began. Emily and I were the main caulkers, we had to use our fingers. Supplies are low generally speaking.

Emily: Is Akim eating raw cassava right now? I don't think he should be  eating raw cassava...
Me: Whoa, whoa, Akim. I don't want any of that raw cassava.

Then, we were to fix the door. Luckily we had a lot of help from Akim, and one of his friends in placing rubber from a bike tire to help close the gaps from the almost closed solar dryer door. Then we used string to wrap around the solar dryer and hooks to tie it on to then have the door more securely closed. It all sounded great to us, but it was hard to explain to Akim and his friend. At that point we could only have so many people explaining a concept to carry out, and only so many bodies can gather around the solar dryer and still be useful and not crowd the area, so I came up with a game of miniature croquet whilst we waited.

Tape formed into balls to play croquet with!

It was really fun actually! Well, maybe I was the only one who thought so...oh well!
Then we thought about making miniature pool, but that was not as successful unfortunately.

The repairs on the solar dryer took longer than we anticipated, so the soak was definitely longer than two hours. Right after the repairs were complete, Emily, Renee, and I hopped to it and worked on getting the slices onto the air drying mat after weight them, as well as into the solar dryer after weighing them. Not even half way through the pretreatments, the scale we were using broke. We thought it was just the batteries, so we grabbed three more double A batteries quickly and replaced them. Still nothing. Maybe it was the rusty looking spring that connected to one of the batteries. We didn't know. Either way, it wasn't working and we didn't have a replacement scale. I had to bring the bad news to our research leader, Emily, who took it with great stride. Looks like we had to finish up without weighing the samples and that was that. So we continued working without getting lunch because time is our enemy once the soak is done. It's best to have everything drying at the same time. Everything runs much more smoothly when we get that done. Poor Renee has been sick and she suffered through it with Emily and I. Yes! We finally got it done! Off to our cold lunch.
Camille and Nicolle were so nice and while we were working had asked if they could watch over the solar dryer and the pretreatments so that we could eat lunch, but again, time was our enemy. But it was so nice of them!
Then, later that night after dinner, Emily volunteered to take the water activity of each pretreatment in both solar dryer and air dryer. Renee and I decided to do it with her, because the water activity meter takes a while to read, and it can get pretty boring. Also, it's easier with another set of hands to open and close the solar dryer and hold a flashlight, and another person for more company. At this point we all were thinking that we would be a true team. Plus, it's just nice to gather the data with some company.
Emily, Renee, and I felt pretty united together after all of that.

Other than that, we worked some more on the nutrition packets, and taught another nutrition class this morning and gave out the packets that we made in our international nutrition class to the families. They liked to look at the picture of their family on the front. Dr. Johnston explained a lot about the packets for the families and how it would help them. It was really fun as always!

The past two days the internet has not been working, and a lot of us have been needing to check emails from professors or get pictures sent from email printed off for the families. It's amazing how useful the internet is!

Joyce and I! She is always so happy! She is so wonderful!