Pasajquim is about a 20 minute boat ride from Luzmi's home on Lake Atitlan and then a 2 hour drive up into the mountains (or the clouds really). It's super, ridiculously beautiful along the winding roads with volcano views and steep drops off the side of the road into the clouds below.
The class has a relationship with this village that goes back at least a couple years. So, our visit had many purposes. One was to follow up on old projects (a drip irrigation system, a corn sheller), two was to work on new projects. We wanted to take water samples and test out our filter. The technical stuff. More on that later. But more importantly, we needed to do things that couldn't be done in LA and find out things we can't Google:
+ what are their attitudes to water?
+ how do they use it? (drinking, cleaning home, rinsing food, watering plants, cleaning clothes)
+ what illnesses are prevalent? (diarrhea is common and dangerous, especially for children)
+ what kinds of products do they purchase?
+ what do they spend on tap water?
+ on bottled water?
+ do they know about water illnesses? (are we going to need to educate users?)
+ what do they think of our prototypes?
Afterwards we had lunch w the villagers and then had a discussion about each project and got feedback from the villagers. It can be hard to get honest feedback because culturally, they want to be nice and welcoming, they know we're trying to help. But we were able to get criticism from them and it was very helpful. Things such as:
+ the thing needs to look better! It's pretty ugly now... it's just pvc pipe fittings. They want a label or some graphic/logo. I totally agree, but wasn't sure if it was just the American consumer in me wanting a BSO (bright shiny object)
+ stress health benefits... water is cheap in rural areas. Maybe stress money savings in urban areas where water is more expensive (this was validated later and is a huge part of our business plan)
+ demonstrate product viability at point of sale (we already knew this from the previous year's research and our own observation at Solola, but it was nice to hear again)
+ it's big... it can have a problem fitting in certain sinks if you're trying to get a bucket under it. We have to figure out how much carbon is necessary and shrink it accordingly. Paradoxically, the vast majority of users prefer our chunkier prototype because it's perceived as being more effective. We have to resolve this combination of being compact and simple, yet robust (and robust looking), yet not so slick that it appears foreign and scares people away. At last, a styling exercise that isn't superficial.
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Water passes from a well-type thing up in the mountains (a big hole, lined with plastic, that gathers rain water). It requires a harness to climb up the mountain and get to it which sounded awesome, but wasn't gonna happen in the time we had.
Juan Carlos was giving a hand while we were testing the filter. Unfortunately, I had my hands full with the filter most of the time, so I don't have any photos of this. I'll have to ask around for more. We did learn a few things though:
+ it's really hard to screw it on tight enough so that it doesn't leak
+ once you get it on super tight, it requires Juan Carlos in order to unscrew it
+ Juan Carlos can't be sold along with the filter, so we're going to need a solution
+ fortunately, there are no shortages of solutions to leaky pipe fittings
+ since the carbon in the filter gets used up, ppl may want to disable or remove the filter when using water for certain tasks: cleaning clothes, watering plants, other things besides drinking & rinsing food
+ we don't really want ppl removing the filter often because it opens up opportunities for contamination and damage and it's an annoyance
+ a y-valve might be a nice option to offer filter-less water
Reverse view of previous shot.
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