On routine, work, a new gig and some rather good news...

It's been a long time since the last blog post - nearly a month. That's not because there's nothing been happening and I've had nothing to write about, but at the same time it's not that I've been so busy and occupied that I haven't had time to sit down and write. It's basically just because we have a kind of routine here which revolves around our communal living situation, and it's just too easy to fall into the habit of spending free time relaxing in the lounge strumming a guitar, or sitting out back playing dominoes, rather than knuckling down in front of the computer and writing.

It's kind of ironic that one of the reasons I think I can never settle anywhere for very long is that I have a fear of routine and of time passing me by too quickly. Yet in many ways there is more routine in my daily life here, and time is passing more quickly, than back in Germany. Every morning starts the same - I get up around 7:30, grab some toast and coffee downstairs then head to the office in INATEC where I sit at my computer and work on my projects, occasionally venturing up to the workshop to show my face and see what's going on. At 10 the boy who sells the paties comes round and I buy two of his tasty spicy paties for 10 cordobas (30p). At 12:30 we all head back up to the main house for lunch, cooked by the mamas, and at 1:30 we head back down to the office to carry on working. People start drifting out of the office around 5pm, but I generally stay till around 5:45, when it's getting dark and the street dogs start getting nasty. Once home I have my (cold) shower, dry off and head downstairs to see who's around and what dinner plans are. Occasionally we go out to eat but usually we make something, nine times out of ten some variation on pasta with onion, garlic and tomatoes, or "toe-may-toes" as most people here call them.

And that pattern repeats itself every day, except for the occasional trips out to the communities. All this is not to say that things are boring - far from it. I'm enjoying life here hugely, still learning lots and generally having a great time. I am still working primarily on the 17' turbine and the biodigester. The focus of my turbine report has changed a little in the last couple of weeks. Originally I was supposed to produce a report detailing to our management how much it would cost to develop and build the 17' turbine, and the intention was that blueEnergy would fund it from their R&D budget. However, like all NGOs these days (I guess), money is tight at blueEnergy at the moment and it has been decided to try and find an external funder/partner for the 17' turbine. So I have been rearranging and rehashing the report a bit to make it into a document that can be sent to potential funders as a proposal. That should be ready in the next few days. On the biodigester front, having expored several potential designs, I have now arrived at what I believe is the "right" design for our needs, basically a fairly light modification to a design that's used in a few places around the world already. Things are only really being complicated somewhat by bossman G's propensity to think bigger than is perhaps achievable - every time I show him a design, I see his eyes light up as he dreams of all the extra possibilities that open up. Now he wants to plonk his workshop on top of the digester (don't ask me why). However I'm confident I can rein him in a little and I'm hoping that construction work will start in the next couple of weeks.

This week we had were visited by a group from MIT in Boston. Amy, a PhD student working on charcoal production in developing countries, brought three undergrad students down to visit blueEnergy and see what we get up to, and in return they gave us a fascinating workshop on how to produce charcoal from waste products like coconut husks and sugar cane bagasse. Due to me owning a large, impressive-looking camera, I was given the job of accompanying the group for the week and documenting their trip in photo and blog form. That meant I got to tag along on their trip to Kakhabila, a nice chance to break up the aforementioned routine for a couple of days. There are a few more university visits in the pipeline for the coming weeks, and the report I'm writing will be posted on the bE website as a tool to attract more (and thereby bring some more funds to blueEnergy). I'm hoping to make this a permanent gig and get to go on all the trips these groups will be making.

Whilst on the subject of universities, some good news came in during the three weeks since my last post - I got accepted onto the Atmosphere/Energy Masters program at Stanford University in California! Seeing as probably the main reason for my coming to Nicaragua and joining blueEnergy at all was to strengthen my university applications, it's job done really. But the experience and knowledge I'm gaining here will also help me, I believe, to get some research work with some of the professors at Stanford so that I can help fund my time there. Because a Stanford education doesn't come cheap...

Next week is Semana Santa, or Holy Week, and we all have the week off here in Bluefields. I'm heading out to Little Corn Island for some snorkelling, diving and hammock time. I actually went there a couple of weeks ago just for the weekend, but this time I've got six days to chill out by the blue Caribbean sea. Report and pictures coming up in the next blog!

Phil

Trip to Kahkabila & Set Net

Last week I went on a four day trip to two of the communities that we operate in - Kahkabila and Set Net. Our job was to check up on the wind turbine at Kahkabila which had been reported as not working, and to do some maintenance work on the community installation in Set Net as well as install some small domestic systems.

The two hour boat trip to Kahkabila took us up through the jungle and mangrove swamps that line the various rivers and waterways that link Bluefields lagoon with Pearl lagoon, the next one to the north. After a quick stop in the town of Pearl Lagoon to drop off some things that we only needed in Set Net, we carried on across the lagoon to Kahkabila, getting thoroughly soaked in the process as the wind came up and our little boat struggled to ride the waves.

In Kahkabila we went to examine one of the two wind turbines that blueEnergy have installed there, as it had been reported to not be working. A quick check on the turbine itself showed no obvious problems, but once we checked the battery bank that it was connected to, the problem was clear. Somebody had for some reason moved one of the positive wires from the turbine and connected it to the negative terminal on one of the four batteries. That had led to the battery getting a reverse charge, and had thrown the system voltages completely out of kilter. This was responsible for the strange behaviour of the turbine. There wasn't much we could do except disconnect the battery and take it back to Bluefields for examination, although Jono (head of our technical department) figured it was probably ruined. At $400 a battery, it was an expensive mistake.

Kahkabila is a pretty community of around 800 mainly Miskitu people with houses scattered around a large football field which reminded me of an English village green. There are at least three school buildings, three churches, a medical centre and a basketball court. The setting on the edge of Pearl Lagoon is quite idyllic. However blueEnergy's work there was rendered somewhat superfluous when, pretty much unannounced and definitely unexpectedly, the Nicaraguan national grid arrived there late last year. With our work done, we spent the late afternoon on a short hike out through the jungle to a new eco-lodge that's being built on a peninsula to the north of the village. We slept that night in hammocks in the old school house, after a big meal of rice, beans and plantain in the house of the community leader.

Next day we motored back across a much calmer sea to Pearl Lagoon again to pick up the things we needed for Set Net. The wind was really blowing though as we made our way to the exit of the lagoon and the route out to the open Caribbean. At the police check point at the mouth of the lagoon they told us we'd never make it to Set Net in those conditions. They were wrong, and ninety bone jarring, spray drenched minutes later we had arrived. Set Net is a very different place to Kahkabila. We arrived to find gale force winds, rough seas and grey skies. The community is nothing more than a string of houses lined up along the top of the beach, exposed to the full force of the Caribbean winds, many (including that of our hosts) constructed from little more than corrugated iron and what appeared to be the flotsam and jetsam washed up on the beach through the centuries. There's no chance of the Grid arriving there anytime soon. Sitting in the smoky kitchen of our hosts, the Hudson family, listening to them speaking in English, accents heavy with Caribbean tones (some would call it Creole but it wasn't hard to understand at all), and listening to the wind battering the walls and roof outside, I couldn't shake the impression of a people wrenched from their homes in Africa by the colonial powers all those centuries ago, transported around the world in service of the Empire and simply then marooned here, in the least hospitable place imaginable.

After lunch, as Jono and Pedro headed off to relocate the blueEnergy battery bank and control panel from the school, which lost its roof in a hurricane last autumn, to the church, I headed off with Francois to a neighbouring house to install some new lighting and check up on its solar installation which was playing up. In addition to wind turbines, blueEnergy also offers heavily subsidised individual domestic systems consisting of a small solar panel, a battery and charge controller and two or three LED or CFL lights.

While I installed two new lights, Francois checked the system and found that the battery had been left discharged for some time which had damaged it. Next day, Francois & I had three new systems to install. For me it was quite daunting... with no training and little clue, I was suddenly let loose on people's houses and expected to install whole lighting systems. The houses may not have been much to look at, but they were still people's homes and I was quite nervous screwing into their ceiling beams and drilling holes in their walls. That was compounded by the whole family sitting around me, men, women and children watching every move I was making. But when it was finished, and Francois connected the solar panel, and their faces were lit up by the light I had installed.... that was really a very rewarding feeling indeed.

Meanwhile, the wind had died off, the sun had come out and Set Net didn't seem like nearly such a desolate place anymore. I almost grew to like it, and I definitely grew to like our warm, domino playing hosts. Hopefully I will get more chances to go back to Kahkabila and Set Net in the next few months. For now though, I am back in Bluefields and working feverishly on our new biogas generator plans!!

Laters,

Phil