Start of Week Two

Pressure cooking on a coal stove at World Hope.

We started off the day by assessing the roof of the MPS again and talking with our construction lead on the best way to fix it. Eventually we decided that adding more support beams and attaching the plastic more tightly would work. Rachel stayed at the site to oversee this process while Isabel, Marc, and Jawara went to the market for more supplie

First, we shopped around for a way to seal the metal drum for pasteurizing the substrate. Our first idea was placing the metal lid inside a rubber bike tire, but then decided that they wouldn't be attached tightly enough to keep the drum sealed. Across the street from the tire shop, we found a firm plastic hose that would function much better. We wanted to cut a slit along the hose and put the lid inside so that the hose would be a rubber bumper around the entire lid. We plan to use the RTV silicone glue we used earlier this summer to attach the two together, however we left this at the hotel and will have to wait till tomorrow to retrieve it.

Lid of steel drum with rubber hose.

Back at the site, the process of removing the old roof and adding supports was successfully completed and the structure's new roof looks much more durable. In addition to this, we also added the doors for the three rooms.

On the spawn front, we used a towel and fan we purchased at the market today to better dry them. We put them into one of the lidded jars we purchased and pressure cooked it. The pressure cooker ran dry after a little over 30 minutes, which was disappointing but nothing new. We let it depressurize, added more water, and then continued with the timer. Next time we want to use closer to 2.5 or 3 inches of water to hopefully stop running dry.

Another highlight of today was that we found wild mushrooms growing on the grounds of World Hope.