While on a class trip to Madagascar I helped to design and build a treadle pumps to improve crop irrigation for a small village in the southwestern part of the country. The village had two vegetable gardens with three-meter deep wells and very inefficient bucket systems to retrieve the water. Effective crop watering was important because crops in the village were often the only source of income for the people of Ranobe. The treadle pumps were very effective at transferring energy generated from walking into pumping water. They generated enough pressure water half the fields without additional hosing.
Building the treadle pumps in Madagascar was difficult despite building a prototype in the US before leaving. It was quite a learning experience building something is a foreign country without all the resources we were used to. We had to get creative with the materials we had access to. Our student team built the first pump, the second pump however was built while I extended my stay in Ranobe after the class left. I worked with two local men to complete the pump. Despite the language barrier we completed the pump and installed it in the second garden.
