Tools and Materials That Survive the Tropics

The climate destroys things

Heat, humidity, sun and rain will break most of what you buy for outdoor teaching. Budget for that or you will spend the same money twice.

Buy these

Metal trowels and forks with one piece construction. The cheap ones with a plastic handle joined to a metal head fail at the joint within a season.

Plastic watering cans rather than metal. Metal rusts through here in about a year.

Buckets. More than you think. They are the most used item on any site and they cost almost nothing.

A proper hose with a real fitting, if you have a tap. Cheap fittings leak, and a leaking fitting in a school is a puddle and an argument.

Laminated everything. Any paper you want outdoors more than once has to be laminated. Unlaminated card lasts about nine days.

Do not bother

Wooden handled tools unless you will oil them. They swell, split and go mouldy.

Cardboard plant labels. Use plastic and a permanent marker, and even then expect to rewrite them annually because the sun fades the ink.

Anything with a spring or a small moving part. It will seize.

Fabric anything left outside. Mould arrives fast.

Free things that work well

Rice sacks as grow bags. Paint buckets as containers. Bamboo as stakes, canes and edging. Coconut husk as mulch and as a potting medium. Broken tiles as path edging.

Store it properly

A tool left outside overnight in the wet season is rusting by morning. One box, one named child, one routine at the end of every session. That routine will save you more money than any purchasing decision.