Sounds of Nicaragua

Since blogger seems to be more inclined today to allow me to post videos I thought I'd aprovechar the moment and try posting some Sounds of Nicaragua.




Christmas festival. A man letting anything go during his performance at the month long christmas party held in La Plaza Del Revolución. Pretty hilarious but at the same time you have to respect someone out there obviously doing what they love, damn what anyone thinks.



La Griteria. Literally "The Screaming." A festival where people build small shrines to the virgen mary and then proceed to scream at her at the top of their lungs how thankful they are for her son. Although at this party in front of the old cathedral their was more waiting in line for the free government gift packages than there was actually screaming.

Windy Wonder - ASOFENIX DC-119

A quick note to totally redeem myself. After totally humiliating myself a few weeks ago, scaring a bunch of campesinos half to death and causing undue pain and suffering to some innocent, non-assuming PVC blades I have in fact installed achieved victory.....for now.

Last week saw the successful test run of, what Jaime has officially christened "DC-119," Asofenix's first wind turbine model (The "D" is for Dave, the "C" for Calvin (the principle designers and fabricators), the first "1" for being the first wind turbine, the second "1" for being made in January and the "9" for the year.....it's also ingenious because it also produces DC power....get it....DC-119). The turbine produces between 0 and 100 watts depending, of course, on the wind. Hopefully it won't be zero too much. The voltages hover between 15-28 volts with amps between 1.5 - 3.5. So now the next step is to finish the installation next week by building a battery charging station and installing the controller, battery and a few lights.

I'm going to try to publish a video I took of the turbine working but since blogger hasn't allowed me to upload a video in the last 5 months I'm not holding out much hope.

Saludos from Nicaragua....Dave

It doesn't all go right

As the title goes, we don't always get things right.  Be it failing to recognize bad leadership in a community, installing faulty and broken equipment, or incorrectly sizing a solar installation, sometimes we just make mistakes.  This is especially true in the developing world where we often lack the resources, time and, most importantly in my case, expertise to get it right....right away.  But in the end it's ok, as always and everywhere we learn from our mistakes and hopefully share a laugh or two as well (so long as they aren't TOO serious).  And also, here the people's patience is infinite, being they have a lot of time and not a lot of people offering to help.  So in the end everything seems to work out, the water arrives, the lights turn on, the stoves work and most importantly, the smiles appear.

I bring up the topic of mistakes because I recently made my first notable mistake to date, and while being "explosive," nobody got hurt and we all got a little chuckle.  My mistake involves a wind turbine that I've been working on for Asofenix.  The design is based on simplicity and cost.  Using a $35 generator, a 6 meter tower and PVC blades we hoped to provide enough power to charge 1 or 2 batteries in a reasonable amount of time (1 day).  

The problem started with a lack of resources, in this case that we didn't have the money to do a wind study on the site we selected, instead we just climbed the hill and said "yup, there's wind."  Well there was DEFINITELY wind.  The problem actually started with the worries about the structural rigidity of the PVC blades and whether they would bend or not in the strong wind gusts, thus potentially striking the tower.  For this reason we moved the tower farther away from the hub and spinning blades of the generator.  We did this by adding weight (a big rock actually) to the back of the horizontal square metal tube resting on top of the tower upon which the generator was mounted.  The weight in the back shifted the center of mass of the system backwards, allowing us to move the tower back as well, far away from the blades.  What I didn't consider, because I never saw this failure mechanism, is that moving the tower back along the square tubing, away from the generator, increased the bending moment due to the weight of the generator AND the force of the wind on the blades.  

Remember how earlier I stated that there DEFINITELY was wind

?  Well there was a lot more than I had expected, and when we raised the tower the blades were spinning much fasting that I had expected, increasing drastically the force on the horizontal tube.  To make a long story short the metal tube actually bent in the force ofthe wind until the blades made contact with the tower, shattering into thousand of PVC shards.  The lesson learned....use a stronger tube, smaller blades and less space between the tower and generator.  We'll be applying these lessons this weekend in the second attempt to install our first wind turbine......wish us luck :)

In other news, I recently gave my first presentation / workshop in spanish to a group of campesinos, about the basics of electricity and how to install a home solar panel system.  About halfway through the 30 minute talk I forgot how to conjugate verbs, but I think they understood because 2 days later we supervised as they successfully installed their first system, saving themselves hundreds in hiring professional installers.  Now we feel confident in allowing them to install the rest of the 20 houses left in the community with panels bought through a grant given to Asofenix.

Finally, we're leaving in 3 hours or so to finish the installation of the water pumping system in Sonzapote, finally connecting each house up to the 5000 gallon tank which will gravity feed water throughout the community.

Now We Can Breathe

Dicember has been a busy month and for that I haven't been able to write very often (or at least haven't felt like making the time).  Now, while sitting in the airport with nothing to do I finally feel posessed to scribble a little.  Unfortunately, thinking back on all that we've done I'm becoming a bit overwhelmed as too how to go about it.  I guess I'll just start where I left off last time and see how far I get.

Hmmm....where did I leave off last time.  If I remember correctly we were getting ready for the arrival of Michel, GreenEmpowerment's solar engineer, and the quickly approaching installation of the Sonzapote solar water pumping project.  Overall the project was a great success and an AWSOME learning opportunity for me.  There's a huge difference between planning/designing and actually installing and the hands on experience was invaluable.  I'm now really anticipating Asofenix's next solar water project now that I have this one under my belt.

The work really started 3 days before heading to Sonzapote, when Michel arrived in Managua.  I had been communicating with Michel pretty regularly regarding the project details but it turns out that we were missing a truckload of supplies, ranging from high pressure PVC tubes to valves and elbows to safety rope and even nuts and bolts.  A look at the picture below shows the notes Michel and I worked off of as we looked for parts.  We managed to get everything prepared and ready, even with the horrible supply chain issues that are always present in Nicaragua, however Michel brought up a good point in that it seems to him that everytime he comes down to help with an installation Jaime relies on him more and more to plan and purchase last minute things.  This seems troubling as a major goal of Green Empowerment is to make the NGO's we work with, such as Asofenix, just as sustainable and self-sufficient as the projects they install.  We talked a lot about why this is backslide is occuring but no solid conclusions were reached.  One hope is that the presence of long term Asofenix volunteers (i.e. myself, seth and sarah) might help by supplying a consistent presence and experience base for future projects.  Who know if we're right, I hope so but only time will tell.

The actual instalation in Sonzapote went suprisingly well.  in two and a half days we were able to construct the solar array, controller, pump, tanks and piping.  All that is left now is to bring the piping to people's homes and connect the meters.  It was a great experience being able to work hand in hand with the communities.  Nicaraguans aren't always the most gracious people (you rarely hear a "gracias" while working in the campo) but nonetheless it was clear to see the excitement and appreciation in their smiles when the first buckets of water started to come out of the the well.  A special thank you to Michel from Green Empowerment who was vital to our efforts as well as a patient and knowledgable teacher.  Who knows, maybe some day soon his wish will come true and he won't be needed down here anymore....although that doesn't sound like good long term employement planning to me.

After the Sonzapote installation we dove straight into a month of week or 10 day long volunteer trips hosted by Green Empowerment and Asofenix, in which student groups from various universities arrived for planned excursions and projects (biodigestor, improved cookstove, wind turbine, irrigation, etc...) in the communities where Asofenix is involved (bramadero, el corozo, malacatoya, etc...).  I will admit that I'm not the biggest fan of these groups as I see them as a bit of distraction, not as much for Asofenix as for myself, as well as very intensive in terms of the amount of energy and planning needed, distracting me from the many other things which I want to focus my attention (biodigestor plans, micro hydro development, etc).  This is only my personal opinion and is very different from the Asofenix's stance.  Jaime really enjoys the groups and sees them as a great resource for us now and in the futre.  They definitely are a source of money for Asofenix and a really effective way to raise awareness and partnerships back in the US.  We already have several volunteers who want to stay in touch and help out from home....to these special people, we are currently looking for old, used laptops to install in communities that we have recently provided with electricity.  If you have one that you don't know what to do with just let me know.  

I think the problem for me is that I'm not a natural organizer and at times I felt as though I had a million things coming at me at once and all the while I had in the back of my mind whether people were enjoying themselves.  The bottom line is that it wasn't what I envisioned myself doing for a month of my time here and while it's something that in the big picture helps everybody in different ways (Green Empowerment, Asofenix and the groups), it wasn't something that I personally took to very well.

Getting that off my chest I can admit that there were some parts that I liked.  The people were overall very nice and well intentioned, and again it is a win win win situation when you look at the BIG BIG picture (unfortunately I'm only a small part of that).  

So now that the last members of the groups are finally trickling out of the office we have a little time to breath and reorganize ourselves.  The rest of the month includes finishing the small wind turbine installation in Sonzapote, diagnosing the Protreritos water pumping failure, finish installing the burner and pressure release mechanism in the Bramadero biodigestor, finishing the irrigation system in Bramadero and training the 6 community technicians who will complete the installation of the remaining 21 solar panels for El Corozo.  I also think we have to do some more planning on the microhydro but that's only in the back of my head right now.

I think that pretty much got us up to speed.   Sorry it took so long to get this out and I'll try to be more regular with my upcoming posts.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!

Check out my pictures at www.greengringo.shutterfly.com for photos of the Sonzapote installation and more.

Oh Dicember

Ok ok ok ok ok .... I'm back.

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

Los Elecciones

Election season has arrived to Nicaragua.  And, while certainly not as paradigm shifting and barrier shattering as those in the United States (personally I'm still heartbroken Nader didn't pull it off this time), Nicaragua at least had it's fair share of intrigue.

First a little background, as well as I can determine from talking to co-workers and friends and a little reading (I had to find a good Reagan quote),  Nicaraguan polictics, similar to the US, currently hover between two main political ideologies.  However, whereas we hover between liberal and conservative, they hover between socialist and liberal.  2006, I think, saw the resurgence of Daniel Ortega and the socialist Sandinista Liberation Front (FSLN).  You may remember Ortega and the Sandinistas from the 80's when the US organized and armed a contra movement to remove them from what was then a non-elected Ortega dictatorship (they have just previously overthrown a US supported Somozo dictatorship).  You might remember this little shindig...they call it the Iran-Contra-Affair.  If you don't it pretty much went like this:  CIA sells illegal weapons to Iran, Iran gives US money, US uses money to illegally finance, organize and train contra rebels, Reagan claims to his death that the US support of the "democratic resistance" was justified.  Anyways, in 1984, after defeating the contras, Ortega called for elections (which were and have been monitored ever since by international organizations such as the Carter Center) and ever since Nicaragua has seen a rather stable and fair democracy.

So where was I...oh yeah, 2006, Ortega wins a rather stunning presidencial election with 37% of the vote.  Pretty much the 3 liberal parties split the rest of the votes among themselves allowing him to win in one of those "what just happened" moments.  Still it is deemed a fair election and even President Bush called to congratulate him.  Is Ortega winning a bad thing?  Who knows.  Ortega has definitely moderated his views since the 80's but then again held a meeting with Ahmadenijad two weeks after being elected and has tied himself very closely to Chavez in Venezuela...nonetheless this is still seen as a legitimate democracy.  Two years later we arrive at the November 2008 Municipal elections (mayors, governors, etc), the Sandinistas have been in power for 2 years and there is a general fear that they may like it a little more than the democracy they ushered in over 20 years ago.  This fear is agitated when the Supreme Electoral Council refuses entry, for the first time in Nicaraguan history, to international election monitoring organizations and restricts the movement and activities of NGO's already operating in the country.

The results, the Sandinistas win 94 of the 146 municipal elections, including the coveted Managuan Alcalde.  The results are broadly viewed as fraud by the opposition parties and questioned internationally for several reasons: 1- Marked ballots indicating support for opposition parties are found in dumps near Leon, 2 - Election results show very questionable figures, including some municipalities giving 100% support to Sandinistas or others showing Sandinistas with a slim majority while the remaining parties have perfectly divided the remaining percentage of votes amongst themselves, 3- Supposedly original carbon copies of the Managuan results show the liberal opposition party (PLC) with over 60% of the vote, 4- Prior to the elections the Sandinistas and Ortega had a 26% approval rating.

As you can imagine, a young democracy and it constituents have not handled this ambiguity well.  Below you will find a video of riots in the streets following the elections.  For 3 days immediately after the elections it was not safe to travel widely in Nicaragua or Managua, especially near the principal rotundas.  Sadly there have been a few deaths reported, including the shooting of an 8 year old girl.  While Managua has calmed itself a little, after the Supreme Electoral Council agreed to review the election results here, there is still a lot of turmoil in other parts of the country, mainly Leon, where the Supreme Electoral Council has decided not to review the results.

Whatever you feel about the results or our own election, take the time to say thanks and acknowledge the fact that we are blessed (I'm referring to fellow Amercans...sorry if anyone else is reading this) to have a fair and mature system of democracy where your vote is always counted (Electoral College aside).

Bluefields / blueEnergy

HI ALL!!

I know that I've been a little out of touch the past few weeks, and that's because I've been spending the past 2 weeks on the beautiful carribean coast.  No, I wasn't on vacation (although it felt like it at times) but instead Jamie and I attended a conference sponsored by blueEnergy, a Bluefields based NGO focusing on bring renewable and clean energy to isolated communities on the eastern coast of Nicaragua.    The conference was very impressive and educational.  BlueEnergy was able to bring Hugh Piggot, a smallwind guru (one of those those people who are worshipped by the hip/in the know culture).  Hugh actually designed the turbine that blueEnergy uses and came to help them fix some bugs and perfect their design.  In addition Hugh put on a wind turbine conference in which he gave presentations on design issues and then we spent the week actually building a wind turbine from the bolts up.......f#@* me it actually worked!!!!

The conference was absolutely awesome.  The mornings were spent in discussions and presentations among the 6 Nicaraguan renewable energy NGO's, universities, micro credit businesses present.  They were Asofenix, blueEnergy, ATDER-BL, Suni Solar, UNI and Inotec.  Topics for the discussion ranged from renewable energy resources in Nicaragua to community organizing to technical training programs.  I was generally impressed with the ideas, thoughtful consideration and obvious passion that the participants of the conference showed.  I learned quite a bit about the situation of renewable energy development in Nicaragua as well as the future ideas and direction of the movement.  Third world development is a confusing and confounding labrynth in which you can easily lose your way.  It's not simply about providing the resources a community needs, it is also necessary to provide a foundation a community to utilize and effectively safeguard their new resources.  When you consider the isolation and generally low level of literacy, much less education, that exists in these communities simply creating a committee and training a technician to operate the system becomes a daunting task.  But a lot of people are thinking very seriously about solutions to these issues and I felt lucky to be present to listen and share a little.

BlueEnergy itself is also a very very impressive NGO.  Founded 4 or 5 years ago by two brothers and their friend they have their executive headquarters in San Francisco as well as an office in Paris, France.  Their development work is all based in Bluefields where they have over 10 volunteers and 7 Nicaraguan shop persons.  BlueEnergy has spent the past year consolidating it's resources and developing it's infrastructure.  the effort has paid off as they now have an extensive staff, office and resources and the ability to fabricate all of their equipment internally, allowing them to save huge sums of money as well as fabricate their machines much quicker and fix any problems that come up.  The result is that by 2015 they plan to have installed nearly 130 wind turbines.  I think if they show the resourcefulness and resolve they've had over the past few years they now have the ability to do it.  Their long term foresight has paid off.  French volunteers are now my favorite by the way.

As for Bluefields itself, I'm in love.  The caribbean culture is such a unique and fascinated microcosm.  It's amazing how in a 7 hour bus ride, followed by a 2 hour panga (boat) ride (bluefields has no road access) how much a culture can change.  You go from a rather hierarchical and in many ways archaic social structure (I'm trying to say machismo and rigid I think) to this very tranquilo and laid back creoul / caribbean culture.  Reggae and Socca playing in the streets, "Yeah man" being hollered out windows and a general flow to the pace of life....takin it easy man.  The night club was something else as well.  For those of you with a brave heart and who don't blush easily I would highly recommend stopping by 4 Brothers if you're ever in the area.

We also got the chance to visit on of the communities that blueEnergy works with, Monkey Point.  If Bluefields sounds isolated you should see Monkey Point.  it's an amazing place, a 4 hour panga ride from Bluefields and one of the most beautiful and unspoiled areas I've ever seen.....unfortunately that often translates to very poor.

All in all it was a great experience and I feel myself lucky to have been invited.  I made many friends and I hope to make it back sometime very soon.

As for now we have a HUGE amount of work to do with Asofenix.  We had an 8 hour meeting today with community committees and with Asofenix staff where we were able to hammer out the details of the next few months and it is very daunting.  4 major projects, an amazing amount of community organizing, several small projects and repairs and the preparation for two 2 week tourist groups (15 people each) which arrive the 14th of December.  The good news is I feel renergized about the work we're doing and excited that projects are finally coming to fruition....I just wish it was a little spaced out.

I'm going to try to get a post in before the elections here on Sunday, summarizing the political process and the parties involved.  First though I need to learn about it myself so we'll see.  Note that these are not presidential elections but kind of similar to the mid-term elections in the US.

See my new Bluefields/Monkey Point pictures to be posted tomorrow afternoon at:

www.greengringo.shutterly.com