Laundry in Guate
Local Guatemalans wash their clothes in a water basin called a pila, and this hand-washing process takes them about eight hours.
Over the weekend, we went to a local entrepreneur who works with bicycle scraps to create new machinery. Maya Petal uses old bicycles to power many different things, including a coffee and corn grinder, a macadamia nut de-sheller (I might have made up that word), a water pump, a power generator (30 minutes on the bike makes 3 hours of electricity), and even a washing machine.
The washing machine works in 30 minutes, which would save my mother eight hours in the pila. They even made a stationary bike for a local Guatemalan girl with MS. I would like to show you all some pictures of the place, but my internet connection here is unbelievably slow.
You can find their website, mayapetal.org,
here.