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.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
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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