An awesome handcart...

Sorry for the delay, but a week or so ago, I finished helping construct a handcart to be used in the community.


Many of them are wood, but this one is metal for extra durability. It was also great practice ahead of constructing a trailer for the tractor to helping with harvesting and general transport, which is slowed slightly while searching for an axel with a differential, which we identified as necessary for the stability of the trailer given the terrain it will be traversing.

In a recent blog entry titled “Life Changing,” I described, among other things, that nearly everything is reused, and the materials for this handcart were no exception; only welding rods and paint were purchased at this time. The axle and wheels are from an old wooden cart, the rods for the frame are reappropriated from something else, and you may or may not be able to tell, but all the flat sheets on the bottom and sides are cut and flattened 55-gallon drums. You know, the ones commonly used in the US as trash cans at parks and such.

We pounded them flat with a mallet and then cut them 1 inch at a time with a chisel and the mallet. We also cut a worn out steel-belted tire with a hacksaw for the “brakes” at the back, which are installed reusing some nuts and bolts with some homemade washers from left over sheet metal.

This handcart is very useful in the community for helping fetch water in 20-liter jugs, as well as other materials. There has been a water shortage lately that we have even felt; our host has enormous water storage tanks that he thought would keep us from realizing any water problems, but when he needed to refill them the local waterline had been broken by elephants that were looking for water several towns away. We have been able to fetch water from his well for washing (we buy pure drinking water), but we have seen ladies along the road carrying a full 20-liter jug balanced on their head (probably like 40lbs - I don't know how they do that!) from watering holes and boys on bikes can manage 3 of the jugs, but this cart has already allowed them to fetch a lot more in a single trip.

[Update: I saw it in use with one teenaged boy pulling it by the handles and about 6 younger boys around the sides and back kind of helping push. They had 7 or 8 of the water jugs, which the younger boys probably wouldn't have been able to carry theirs once filled. The cart was serving its purpose!]