The past two days have been fairly uneventful as I have been preparing to part ways with everyone that I have met here.
On Wednesday, Ben and I woke up early so that we could get our chair back from Zakeria, as well as receive some feedback from his two day experience with it.
The interview was complicated. We told him at the beginning of the interview to be brutally honest with us, as that was the only way to make the chair better if changes were needed. We continued to tell him this throughout, as we felt like we were getting responses that were too perfect, and that he was just telling us stuff to make us happy. Here is a summary of what we found out from him:
- The chair needs to be a bit stronger at the caster wheel joint.
- He didn’t have trouble instructing the daladala conductor on how to fold it, and it took 3 minutes to fold (the 3 minutes seems a bit iffy to me, but it could be true)
- Friends who knew him when he gets off the daladala helped him put it back up. (Though he first said the conductor did it for him. I questioned this, as we were told the conductor wouldn’t do this from a third party one day. I asked the question again later on, and he changed his answer to friends helped him after the daladala dropped him off.)
- They wanted to charge him more for it, so he paid 500TSH instead of 400, which isnt too bad. I never did ask him if he had it on his lap, or if it went on a seat. I am also suspicious that the conductor didn’t fold it all the way, as I had seen them do one other time.
- It was difficult to take off the front wheel, something we knew before hand, and knew we needed to add a couple parts and grind down some parts for improved user-ability.
We took the chair from him in order to make the few improvements. But as we were hanging around the hotel later that day, Mateo came by to take the chair for Zakeria. I went out and talked to him about it, and he had been under the impression that he would be user testing it for 2 or 3 weeks. I told him that we would be making the minor adjustments and returning it to him for use after we left.
Today, Ben and I got up early again in order to go to Shop-Rite, where we picked up Hamburgers, buns, cheese, ketchup, mustard, and pickles. We got to the shop around 10:30 and began cooking the food. We were using a gas stove, but the matches were all gone and Agnes’ lighter was out. So in order to start the stove, Bert took his welder, welded on a scrap piece of metal, took the hot end of the welder and put it by the stove to light it!
Everyone loved the food, or at least they told us they did! It was fun to be able to give them a taste of American food, and they seemed to really enjoy it, especially the pickles and mustard, which they had never heard of before.
After lunch, I began working on the minor improvements. As I was cutting a small piece of metal the help guide the front leg in, the power shut off. It was disappointing, as it was my last day with power and I didn’t get anything done. (We had planned for hamburgers on Wednesday, but Lucas wasn’t going to be there.)
So we spent some time helping cut materials. After that, we assembled our chair and took a bunch of photos of it for our presentation we must give when we returned.
As I am heading out to dinner here shortly, I am sad to say that tomorrow is my last day here. But I am so thankful for all the great experiences I have had and have truly learned more than any other summer project could have brought me. I hope to post the photos from today later tonight, as soon as my camera charges.
Edit: I just remembered all of the recent local 2nd hand clothes I have seen:
- It is 11-8 Cardinals over Cubs
- 2 Blues hats
- 3 Rams gear, one of which was a purple and green and yellow hat, weird
- 2 SLU shirts, one worn by a daladala conductor in the bus I was in
- An UMSL shirt
- And all the Mizzou gear I mentioned earlier
- Have failed to find MIT gear
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