I want to get my blog functional, and I believe the best way to do that is start somewhere. Let me begin by discussing my experience since last week. I spent over a month in the United States before returning back to the wonders of Nicaragua. Everything, well many things are a wonder here to me in one-way or another.
In that time, I spent most of my time in Los Angeles, where I live when I’m not in Nicaragua, and Phoenix. In Arizona I visited Arizona State University to discuss some graduate school possibilities there. Turns out I really enjoy Tempe, which borders Phoenix. It has sun, good weather, and rocks as well as a college, which is really all I need. I’ve applied to graduate schools, perhaps too many, and I’m eager to hear back from them, but more on that later.
January 21st I returned to Managua, a horrible excuse for a capital city. Managua suffers from sprawl as bad as Los Angeles or Phoenix, but with a public transportation system (though I suppose Phoenix is trying). Still, it lacks any the charm. Instead, it’s a collage of depressed buildings, dirty streets and violence. I never feel safe in Managua. I try to spend as little time as possible there.
blueEnergy rents out a house in Managua, Casa Iban, named for the owner, for all of us to stay there in our goings and comings. As it is the only ‘city’ in Nicaragua we often have to travel there to purchase items, attend meetings, and of course travel out of Nicaragua. It’s a nice place, a cozy 2 bedroom house. Included in the package are Raphael and his Father, the Gatekeepers. They have the (actually) esteemed job of staying in the house all the time (in shifts) to guard the house and let any volunteers in who may pass by.
The night of the 21st I met Nico, a French volunteer there. We were to go to Ocotal the following day to visit another NGO named Grupo Fenix. So at 7 am the next morning we went to the Mercador Mayoreo to catch the 3.5 hour bus to Ocotal. The ticket cost C 85 (Cordobas are the Nicaraguan Currency, 1 US $ = 19.8 C). Ocotal is in North-Central Nicaragua, about an hours drive from the border with Honduras. It is also in Mountain country, which I always appreciate. We had to take a half hour bus ride from Ocotal to San Domingo where Grupo Fenix’s Solar Center is.
When we walked up to the center, located strikingly in the middle of nowhere, a bucolic fellow greeted us. Well he actually looked more like a surfer, either way he certainly had been a star in action movies in a former life. Paul, the New Zealander was the man we came to visit. Nico had informed me that he is working on a prototype for a portable LED solar powered system. This turned out to be a bit of an embellishment, it turned out Paul was conceptualizing such a device. This fact did not take away from the benefit of the experience.
There were seven volunteers at Grupo Fenix, all of whom were quite enjoyable and quirky. Grupo Fenix had the setting that I had anticipated working in with blueEnergy, and to get a taste of it was refreshing. The volunteers there lived in homestays, and worked directly in the communities the sought to assist. This is as opposed to blueEnergy, where we live within our own housing, and in Bluefields, 2 hours away from the closest community that we work in.
Several tasks were completed during our trip to Grupo Fenix. The first was the beginning of several discussions that I would have about the logistics of solar panel powered LED lights. Secondly, Nico and I made several contacts that would be beneficial. The first was with Dave, the Canadian from Guelph, who will be the volunteer coordinator for Grupo Fenix for the next year and a half. The great idea that he has is to start a website which would collect information on appropriate technology which NGO’s around the world develop and procedures of how to implement them. If I was more excited about web development I would help with that. The other good contact was Kathryn, from seattle, who will be working with AIDG in Xela, Guatemala to develop a new sister company. I really like the work the Xela is doing, and I believe that she made become a good inside contact for working with them in the future.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Energy installation in Kahkabila
This week blueEnergy is preparing a second installation in a northern community called Kahkabila. Kahkabila is about 2 hours by boat from Bluefields, and is across the lagoon from Pearl Lagoon, the major city in the northern lagoon. This second hybrid energy installation aims to provide power to the heatlth center there, as the first installation is already providing energy to the local school.
My part in this work is twofold. First, I have been working with another volunteer, Marie, to produce a maintenance class for the local operators. This class aims to deliver an understanding of the needs of the system and the basic functionality of system components. It is a 5 day course consisting of 6 hours of instruction a day.
Secondly I will be participating in the installation of the turbine. This will be a 4 or 5 day process as the turbine, solar panel, battery bank and control panel all have to be constructed.
My part in this work is twofold. First, I have been working with another volunteer, Marie, to produce a maintenance class for the local operators. This class aims to deliver an understanding of the needs of the system and the basic functionality of system components. It is a 5 day course consisting of 6 hours of instruction a day.
Secondly I will be participating in the installation of the turbine. This will be a 4 or 5 day process as the turbine, solar panel, battery bank and control panel all have to be constructed.
A meeting with the Territorial Government
This is not how I ever imagined a major government meeting could be. Then again, maybe it is, as I soon realize that I had never given much thought to what a government in a developing rural area would look like. For now, all I know is that it is different.
My assumptions continue to lead me astray. I have been in Central America for five months now, and I am still surprised by my naïvety. Allow me a moment to explain. I live in Bluefields, Nicaragua, which is the main (and only) city in the Southern Atlantic Autonomous Region, a semi- autonomous municipality. Outside of Bluefields, in both the north and south, are regions that are currently being demarcated as indigenous lands, similar to Indian reservations in the US. In the south this region is known as the Rama-Kriol Territory, and is governed by the Rama-Kriol Territorial Government. Their territory is expansive and varied. It contains several small communities all of which have their own communal government and each of which have representatives in the territorial government.
I am now in the territorial governments assembly, normally a semi-annual event. Representatives travel from far and wide to attend this meeting, and the logistics of gathering everyone seems to strain the resources of all involved. Many communities are hours away, accessed only after long boat rides and walks, having little regular contact to Bluefields or the outside world.
Thus, I assumed that such a meeting would have the atmosphere of extreme importance. After all, the territory has extremely dire concerns, not the least of which being constant illegal settlement of mestizos, land management within the communities, and creating a unified identify as a territory. Yet, this is not what I first see. We have a presentation at 2 pm, and it’s 2:30 pm. There are 7 people in the room, out of the expected crowd of 45. Nothing is ever on time in Nicaragua, ever. This is a trait that constantly causes me frustration, and one that I am slowly becoming accustomed to. However, in this case, one has to remember that many of these representatives live in communities where there is no clock, there are no definite times, and where the concept of lateness is at best an intellectual exercise rarely practiced.
Everyone has side conversations during the presentation; this apparently bothers no one but me. The street noise is at time deafening, as taxis honk continuously hoping to attract would be passengers with their coarse beeps. Twenty minutes into the presentation, everyone has arrived. I begin to see the interest that I was waiting for. Questions come from the crowd regarding blueEnergy’s work in Monkey Point and Punta de Aguila. ‘How can other communities work with blueEnergy,’ and ‘ what are blueEnergy’s long term plans,’ are among the questions asked. Guillaume, the director of blueEnergy here in Nicaragua informs me that two of the representatives across the table had kidnapped his mother in the 80’s when they fought with the contra. I am reminded that under the superficial simplicity and flippancy of this meeting is extreme historical and cultural complexity.
Following our presentation is another by a gentleman named Kirkman who is a Nicaraguan doing his Ph.D. in Austria on land use in the Rama territory. He discusses how the land use has changed in the last twenty years, and the alarming trends he has witnessed. Together with mass immigration and land mis-management, Kirkman believes that in ten years very little useful land will be left. Deforestation and over farming are the main culprits he identifies. After the presentation, we all broke into groups to answer some research questions Kirkman had prepared. I sit with representatives from two communities, and discuss with them how their community has changed over the last twenty years.
I have to take a step back. I am talking with a group of people who in the last 20 years have gone through civil war, persecution and extreme poverty and managed to gain their autonomy and now have formed their own government. These are not apathetic people and they are not lazy. I may not understand much about their practices, but of these things I can be sure. The Rama-Kriol government is still transitioning, and as different as this experience is for me, in many ways the experience must be foreign to many of them. My role here is to assist blueEnergy with building capacity in these communities to support our projects, and I feel I have my work cut out for me.
My assumptions continue to lead me astray. I have been in Central America for five months now, and I am still surprised by my naïvety. Allow me a moment to explain. I live in Bluefields, Nicaragua, which is the main (and only) city in the Southern Atlantic Autonomous Region, a semi- autonomous municipality. Outside of Bluefields, in both the north and south, are regions that are currently being demarcated as indigenous lands, similar to Indian reservations in the US. In the south this region is known as the Rama-Kriol Territory, and is governed by the Rama-Kriol Territorial Government. Their territory is expansive and varied. It contains several small communities all of which have their own communal government and each of which have representatives in the territorial government.
I am now in the territorial governments assembly, normally a semi-annual event. Representatives travel from far and wide to attend this meeting, and the logistics of gathering everyone seems to strain the resources of all involved. Many communities are hours away, accessed only after long boat rides and walks, having little regular contact to Bluefields or the outside world.
Thus, I assumed that such a meeting would have the atmosphere of extreme importance. After all, the territory has extremely dire concerns, not the least of which being constant illegal settlement of mestizos, land management within the communities, and creating a unified identify as a territory. Yet, this is not what I first see. We have a presentation at 2 pm, and it’s 2:30 pm. There are 7 people in the room, out of the expected crowd of 45. Nothing is ever on time in Nicaragua, ever. This is a trait that constantly causes me frustration, and one that I am slowly becoming accustomed to. However, in this case, one has to remember that many of these representatives live in communities where there is no clock, there are no definite times, and where the concept of lateness is at best an intellectual exercise rarely practiced.
Everyone has side conversations during the presentation; this apparently bothers no one but me. The street noise is at time deafening, as taxis honk continuously hoping to attract would be passengers with their coarse beeps. Twenty minutes into the presentation, everyone has arrived. I begin to see the interest that I was waiting for. Questions come from the crowd regarding blueEnergy’s work in Monkey Point and Punta de Aguila. ‘How can other communities work with blueEnergy,’ and ‘ what are blueEnergy’s long term plans,’ are among the questions asked. Guillaume, the director of blueEnergy here in Nicaragua informs me that two of the representatives across the table had kidnapped his mother in the 80’s when they fought with the contra. I am reminded that under the superficial simplicity and flippancy of this meeting is extreme historical and cultural complexity.
Following our presentation is another by a gentleman named Kirkman who is a Nicaraguan doing his Ph.D. in Austria on land use in the Rama territory. He discusses how the land use has changed in the last twenty years, and the alarming trends he has witnessed. Together with mass immigration and land mis-management, Kirkman believes that in ten years very little useful land will be left. Deforestation and over farming are the main culprits he identifies. After the presentation, we all broke into groups to answer some research questions Kirkman had prepared. I sit with representatives from two communities, and discuss with them how their community has changed over the last twenty years.
I have to take a step back. I am talking with a group of people who in the last 20 years have gone through civil war, persecution and extreme poverty and managed to gain their autonomy and now have formed their own government. These are not apathetic people and they are not lazy. I may not understand much about their practices, but of these things I can be sure. The Rama-Kriol government is still transitioning, and as different as this experience is for me, in many ways the experience must be foreign to many of them. My role here is to assist blueEnergy with building capacity in these communities to support our projects, and I feel I have my work cut out for me.
Monday, November 24, 2008
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