It seems as though a long time has passed since I last addressed my faithful (hi mom, I know you're the last one left but I'm glad someone still reads this). And in truth, while the hours have not been so many the events have been numerous and long. I've always thought measuring time in hours is kind of missing the point anyway. So I officially apologize for not having written in 342 geagrinons (where a geagrinon is a unit of time measuring 10 events).
So what have been these events? Well first and foremost I have proud to anounce that I have located a Nicaragua thrift store, allowing me to purchase used clothes now both at home and abroad. Besides that we at Asofenix have been extraordinarily busy these last few weeks with the start of major projects, preparation for volunteer groups and planning/design of upcoming projects. The Son Zapote solar water pumping project has finally broken ground with the constructing of the two water tanks. The start was delayed several days because the road is so bad that large trucks cannot pass (there's a bridge that I'm sure is going to collapse every time we go over it). Instead we've had to transfer the cement and sand and iron to small "camionetas" to be transfered on the 2 hour drive to Son Zonapote from the nearest city.
We also have a new arrival in Michel from Green Empowerment, who just arrived arrived yesterday to help with the installation of the pump and panels. Michel is an engineer who has a great depth and breadth of experience in solar pumping systems and he's been an absolute nightmare since he arrived, making us buy things like cables and junction boxes and fittings. No matter what he says I still think we could have gotten it all done with Elmer's glue and shoe laces. In fact he has been real great, but since he arrived we've been running all over the city looking for parts we're still missing. Shopping in Nicaragua is an experience that I find very difficult to tolerate, being so spoiled by Home Depot and the other great hardware store we have. Instead, here we spend hours driving around to corner shops and scraps yards looking for material that could all be collected in one trip to Menards. I've found that there is a very different cultural perspective in regards to time in Nicaragua, which is that they simply don't value it AT ALL. I of course understand the root causes of this difference, namely little money and even less to do (i.e. no job) but it is still absolutely infuriating at times for a gringo like me used to our industrialized life, where "time is money." This is especially the case when what we don't have is time and what we do have is money. However, Jaime, being a true Nicaragua, will rather spend 5 hours searching for a part that costs 0.0005% of the project budget rather than go to a hardware store and pay $3 more. Poco por poco though we're getting there.
Still, everyone at Asofenix is definitely feeling the crunch, due to the fact that December 14 brings the arrival of 15 voluntists (a genetic mix between volunteer and tourist), to join the AF ranks for 2 weeks for cultural immersion and project construction (biodigestors, improved efficiency stoves, solar panels for electrification, etc...). We are still missing many pieces needed to be ready for this group (such as beds) and the delay of Son Zapote has pushed back our window of time between the end of this project and when they arrive to somewhere around 2 days. 2 days in with which to gather all the materials we need, such as plastic, concrete, wire and batteries. This doesn't seem to daunting until you reread my last paragraph and realize that shopping here is equivalents to bashing your head against a concrete wall until you start to drool and can't remember your name. One way or another we'll get what we need to get done. Hopefully the communities hold up their end of the bargains as they are responsible for having usable latrines as well as preparing their homes/yards for the installation of the projects.
Through all of this our saving grace has actually been that government delayed our 2 microhydro projects until January. Apparently they are approving, partial, funding for 6 systems, of which we get 2, but some of the other organizations submitted less than honest budgets and so the whole deal is being delayed to give time to let them get their acts together. I think if we had had to start these projects now we would have gone insane.
What else is new? The streets are relatively calm since the few weeks immediately after the elections. The losing party pretty much realized that, even if fraud was committed, the only way they were going to change the results was with force, and thankfully (at least for now) no one was willing to go that far. It was still an interesting case study though and has left me both disappointed and impressed at various times. One shining star however was the nacional police force, which is greatly understaffed and funded yet, in my mind, showed remarkable effectiveness and restraint in controlling the protests/riots.
Other than that I miss christmas music.
Dave
