Week Nine & Ten

We are now already 10 weeks in Kimilili, we still have one week to go before our vacation!

The last two weeks we mainly worked at Dreamland on the tricycles. We had to improve some things on the first tricycle. We also started building the second tricycle, and this went much faster than the first one. This time we already knew exact how to make all the different parts. We invited the persons for who we are making the tricycles to Dreamland. So they could test it and we could see if all the sizes were fitting. On Monday Emily Rose tested the tricycle; she is a girl of 16 years old and can’t use her legs because of polio. She only comes out of her house when she goes to church on Sunday. With the tricycle she can get out mores, she would like to go to the market. Because she is not fully-grown the tricycle is a bit too big for her, but with some small adaptations it will fit much better. A few days later Geoffrey, a man of 30 years, came to Dreamland to have a test ride in the tricycle. He fitted pretty well in the first tricycle we built; only the steer is a bit too wide, but this is easily to adapt. He already could drive pretty fast!

In the following days we carried on building the tricycles, making it fit better for Emily and Geoffrey and making the drive smoother. Both steers are now smaller. We also changed the frame of the wheelchair. The part where the armrests are- we cut away. Instead of that we placed a diagonal tube, so it wouldn’t be an obstruction during driving. We also made a better brake.

Last Friday at the end of the day we took all our tools to the guesthouse. We had to do a few small things to finish the tricycles so we could bring them to the painter on Saturday. Friday evening and Saturday morning we did the finishing touch and in the afternoon we finally could bring them to the painter! Next Monday they are ready.

Last weekend we went to Kisumu, we stayed at the Sunset Hotel. From our balconies we had a splendid view on Lake Victoria! Like the name of the hotel already says, the sunset was beautiful! We also saw the city Kisumu, which was a nice place. On Sunday we went back to Kimilili by matatu, we were packed with our luggage, six tilapia filet and two blue boxes. We bought the fish for some people in Kimilili and the boxes are for the tricycles, so they can take stuff with them.

Last week, Roel and Marianne arrived. These are two very kind Dutch people. We met them one time in Holland, and they told us some things about Kimilili. They run a foundation for school projects in this area.

Thursday we bought a lamb at the market, he’s called Larilam. Next week we have a barbecue as farewell party and than we are going to eat it. Who’s going to slaughter it, we don’t know yet, but it will probably be Mark. In the next week, the last already, we are going to work on our presentation, manual and report.

Week Eight

Finally we finished the building of the first tricycle. But there is still a big job to do. We thought that we could finish the tricycle on Monday. This was unfortunate but it wasn’t possible, again. But Tuesday in the afternoon the last thing to finish were the brakes. Because we had enough of building we finished the brakes but were not very nice.

We want to test the tricycle, so we took the tricycle to the head office. During the ride we noticeyou hve to be very strong to drive the tricycle and also the stability was not very high. Caspar was driving back and he had to avoid a goat so he drove into a gulley. That was a really test for the tricycle. The frame was not broken, but the wheels didn’t work any more. This was because someone from the village did not do a good job with the spokes of the entire wheel. After this happening we had to buy two new wheels.

Wednesday we tested the tricycle the whole day. We have written a testing protocol. This protocol will be used before improving the first tricycle so we can see what we have to change to the tricycle. And also the testing protocol will also be used after the improving of the tricycle so we can see whether the improvements were good enough. The following points are the main negative points of the testing protocol. The tricycle was not stable enough, the drive is very heavy and the brakes are bad. These are the things we want to change next week. We have also a few other things to do to finalise the tricycle, like installing mudguards, brakes which can be used when the tricycle is standing still and been painting.

So Wednesday till Friday we were busy with the testing protocol. In the same time we wrote a manual for building the tricycle. In the manual we gave a description of every part of the tricycle, the prices and how you get the parts. For example we use a bicycle for the parts. But you have to cut the bicycle to make pieces useful for the tricycle. Finally the manual describes how to fit the parts to each other and how you can fit them together. We hope that IcFEM can use this manual to continue with building of tricycles and to improve them in the future.