Diesel Engine, Energy Audit, Pumps & Groundwater & Waste Management!!

Since our adventures in Pune we have been working solidly, we were even up preparing lessons until 11.30 last night but because the power kept cutting off we were working on our lap top batteries and head torches! It’s been good though and I’ve taught three succesful(ish) lessons from it.

Me in the office busy preparing lessons and enjoying my thimble of chai

The first was on Diesel Engines-you can tell I have been avoiding this one as my knowledge of diesel engines prior to preparing this lesson was slim to none! But I thought this would be a good opportunity to have a short lesson following my epic Smokeless Chulha lesson from last time.  So using the curriculum and the magical internet I managed to produce a lesson that at least informed the students about some aspects of a diesel engine! I do wonder if they knew I had no other background knowledge or if I pulled off looking like a diesel engine guru!  In the afternoon the teacher Wagoley ran a practical where they took apart a diesel engine and got it working again. He was very complimentary of the lesson and said ‘the students had good understanding’ because of it which made me pleased. 



Diesel Engine Practical Lesson-with a very fumey diesel engine!

He also asked that I add slides showing cooling systems which is great as it shows he not only was paying attention to the lesson but thinking about using it again.  So I added these and he taught these slides in my next lesson. I was very happy to see him use my slides.



Wagholey teaching my additional diesel engine slides

We worked through Saturday and rewarded ourselves with three cups of chai at ‘our local’ down the hill. It’s a great wee place with a large man who is lovely that owns it and fries the wadu bows (potato burger things) and pakora. And an even lovelier waiter who runs around giving everyone chai. I think they must think we r very greedy for having more than one cup of chai when we go but the cups are so small and it tastes so good!  We have also taken to having the (far too occasional) ladu. Which looks a bit like the hole from a do ring but with a lot more sugar. We googled it the other day and found out it is made from water, sugar and chickpeas! Its very tasty though but I do fear that they are going straight to my hips! L

On Sunday I gave an ‘Energy audit & electricity bill’ lesson. I initially thought this lesson was a bit of a rubbish topic to have in the curriculum but as I got involved with my presentation I realized how important it was. The electricity bills are in English-which I think is ridiculous-and they are very complex things to understand! I asked two of the teachers and still there were some charges we couldn’t figure out!  It got the students thinking about money and I got to include some calculations that they did together with the help of the teacher ok.  He helps them far too much sometimes and answers questions that I am trying to answer the students-I think sometimes he forgets he is not a student anymore!  I also got the students to carry out an energy audit of the school and sent them away to find out what electricity use was in different parts of the school.  They really seemed to enjoy this detective work! It turns out that the water pump which is on for two hours a day is the biggest user of electricity so I have suggested that they should take on a project to look at other ways they could pump water.   In this lesson my translator disappeared for 20 mins. This was a bit of a struggle but through the use of a very good student and Wagoley we scraped through two slides. I do feel for the students-they must find it difficult enough with a translator never mind with extremely patchy translation.

The next  lesson on the Tuesday was a pump and groundwater lesson.  I really enjoyed preparing this lesson as it was back to something that I had some background knowledge in.  Also it was very good for me to sit down and finally work out how pumps work! I was asked this in my other EWB interview and I couldn’t answer as I just didn’t know. I am now proud to say I now have good knowledge of hand pumps, centrifugal (single, multiple & submersible) and jet pumps! I’m practically a mechanical engineer! Hehe. It was great though but there was just so much information that I wanted to tell them that I omitted any calculations as these just take too long.  I did however include two activities where they had to make a positive displacement pump from a bottle and coin and a centrifugal pump from straws. (I got the idea from the internet) Although the first pump didn’t work I really think these activities helped with the students understanding-especially for the centrifugal pump.  I was really pleased I included these and got good compliments from the Principle teacher. 

Even 20 year olds like playing with straws & water!

When I was preparing this lesson I asked to see our water pump that the school gets its water from. Every alternative day we get it from the government storage reservoirs that are just up the hill a bit and the rest of the time we get it from an uncovered well next to the road.  I couldn’t believe this. And they wonder why we only drink the water from the chlorine filters? There were shoes floating in the well so goodness knows what else is in it that I couldn’t see.  We are lucky though at the school to have water. The village only gets water every 2 or 3 days as the rainy season has not been as rainy here as it is supposed to be.  Supposedly those that can afford it get water tanked in, I guess those who can’t take water from open wells like ours (another big source of contamination).  At the end of the lesson I got the students to carry out a survey of the pumps at the school including the head pumped and whether there could be any improvements.  I’m disappointed to say that they didn’t get straight away that the well should be covered despite me stressing this in my lesson. However upon suggestion they fully agreed. Again I hope that this will be a future lesson for the Environment class.



Supposedly our drinking water!



 Today I delivered a lesson on … Waste management! Yay! I managed to get it in somewhere! A whole 2.5 hour lesson on poo and rubbish! I was absolutely loving it! As the curriculum on covered septic tanks I took it upon myself to create this lesson so obviously I wanted to talk about everything! It was good as a fair bit of it was revision such as soak pits and biogas. I was pretty disappointed with the students though as when I asked them what a soak pit was only one student could answer. I suppose this demonstrates the importance of practical activities-they did not do one for this as I was told ‘there was not time’ as it was a few days before the school’s big open day.  I was happier when upon revisiting the soak pit slide they were able to explain how it worked etc so they hadn’t completely forgotten everything.  I also spoke about sanitary landfills and recycling. By stressing the time for materials to degrade and showing them pictures of animals eating plastic I think I managed to get my message across.  I emphasized the picture with a cow eating plastic as cows are regarded so highly over here due to their value on fields etc.  I think I almost exploded with enthusiasm at one point! It was when I was showing them an animation I had created to represent a news article I had read during my research about waste being illegally shipped and dumped in India. I really wanted them to know how wrong this is and how their beautiful country should not be taken advantage of by us ‘Developed’ Westeners.

Pabal market & all their rubbish!

I went to meditation on Tuesday as I hadn’t been in over a week and one of the teachers wanted to use my lap top as he was taking the session after meditation. So after a lovely 15 mins of silence and trying to think about the temperature of my breathing-that’s supposedly the first step in meditation-and not thinking about the rats rustling in the adjoining larder next door-the teacher led a session in English grammer! I couldn’t believe it!-what a meanie! He gave a presentation (downloaded from the net) on nouns and verbs (fair enough) adverbs, articles, conjuctions pronouns and loads of other grammer types that I cant even remember! I was genuinely struggling! I have no idea how the students managed it and am now not at all surprised why many of them do not like English if that is what they are taught! I was trying to explain to the students that if the exercise that was given at the end of the session was given to UK citizens at least half would not be able to complete it.  I’ve decided I will now only go to meditation on Sundays when the students sing so I do not need to feel so stupid again!

On Monday it was Krishna Janmashtami-the birthday of a God that liked to smash plates when he was a child. (why not?!) so to celebrate all across India pots filled with ghee or a rice mixture are ties up in really high places. Then people make human pyramids and try and smash open the pot with a coconut. J The school prepared one for the students and it was brilliant watching all the boys and staff get involved.  Whilst some are making pyramids the others are dancing (a lot of hip thrusting going on!) or pouring buckets of water over each other-yes it is all boys!  It was great to see but possibly the most random festival I’ve ever heard of.  Supposedly in Pune and Mumbai the human pyramids are 6-7 people high!

Human pyramid to crack open a pit with a coconut-I wonder why we dont celebrate this in the UK?

Tomorrow afternoon we are heading through to Pune again as we are keen to see some of the protests that are going on due to the Anna Hazare’s fast.  People are really excited here and it supposedly is the biggest movement since Ghandi.  We may also buy more sweets and take advantage of Graemes hot shower! Also I found out today that someone has been stealing my pants from our washing line with over half of them now gone! So a trip to Pune is very much required to restock!-I dont think you can buy pants in Pabal-thats probably why someone is stealing my ones!