Pictures From Sabana Grande

I already wrote the story, but here are some pictures we took there.

A mountain that was in our backyard


A giant tree that also is a land mark for taxi drop offs (me standing next to it)


The Solar center with various ovens and dryers in the front


Wind Turbine at the Solar Center


Me with Erin and Nathan; 2 of the Sabana Grande Volunteers

Quite an eventful weekend

As I mentioned before, we went to Sabana Grande this past weekend. It was a very interesting (and well needed) break from Managua. The only way to get up there is by a 4 hour charter bus, which while not the most fun method of travel, is better than the typical inter-city transports which are refurbished U.S. school buses. We had about an hour wait at the bus station. At one point Tim announces he has to use the restroom (he's had the runs for a few days) but upon discovering the 2 Cordoba (10 cent) charge for the restroom, he gets belligerent and say "Well, I'm not paying for that! I'll hold it." That worked for about an hour till Tim had to stop the bus and run screaming off of it to a hole in the ground. Finally, after that interlude we arrived at Sabana Grande. We stayed with Dan - another UD volunteer - at the house of Donia Carmen, who also lives with her 13 year old granddaughter, Scarlet. The first night (we arrived around 5:00) all of the volunteers at Sabana Grande came over and we played cards, exchanged stories, and caught up in general.

We woke up the next day and everyone met up at the bus stop to go to Somoto Canyon. This is a local tourist area where you can hire a guide and go swimming in the beautiful canyon while admiring the wildlife and natural colors it presents (My camera is at the house so I'll post photos later but here is one from Google ). We arrived and had about a two mile walk down a path that crossed the river several times (proving interesting for certain persons who decided to wear hiking boots instead of sandals as recommended... hint not me). At the end of the trail, we hired a boat to take us a bit further up the river and to serve as a guide of where is and isn't safe to swim. The current was stronger in certain places due to recent rain fall, but these were easily avoided, and if you did get caught they were not so strong they couldn't be swum against. The whole experience was very fun and refreshing. We stayed at the canyon for about 3.5 hours before heading home.

Once back at Sabana Grande, we cleaned up and relaxed before heading to Ocotal, a nearby big city. It should be noted that Tim ran out of money here as he had an idiot moment and brought only 300 Cordoba ($15) to cover taxi, bus, food.... I.E. I had to pay for him until we got to Managua and he paid me back. Ocotal is one of the nicer cities in Nicaragua, it is much cooler and developed than Managua, and has a much safer feel to it as well. The plan was to go to a restaurant and to then go dancing after we met up with David, the Director of volunteers from Grupo Fenix (He is Canadian but lives in Nicaragua). I had the luck to get a bad stomach ache and fever at the restaurant and had to get a hotel and return to Sabana via cab the next day, while the others got to have a fun night. Not a good day to be me.

The next day I was feeling somewhat better but still not great. Most people were still tired from the day before so we just spent the day relaxing. In the evening, Dan, Tim, Scarlet, and I played Uno for a while which was very fun. Scarlet was funny; she spoke clear Spanish and readily engaged in conversation which was very helpful.

On our final day in Sabana Grande we quickly visited to Solar Center where the Sabana Grande volunteers work. They showed us around, and we got to see the various solar ovens and dryers they had along the autoclave being developed. They have made the best that they can with the local resources, choosing to heavily insulate the ovens as aluminum foil is the best reflector they can get. We only spent about an hour there before taking an uneventful bus ride home. Upon returning, we waited at the Suni building for an hour before taking a quick trip to a nearby building site where we are planning to incorporate a form of passive solar air conditioning. Our current project is to determine how many kW of refrigeration will be necessary for the building so an appropriate system can be installed. We have only just started this but we are heading to the site again tomorrow to take various temperature measurements and analyze the materials being used.

Finally, yesterday evening we moved out of the old house and into the new one. We had had too many issues with thievery and though all I had taken were some batteries, Tim had many more expensive things stolen and both of our suitcases had been knifed in a similar manner. After we first discovered the thievery, we originally were going to move out the 26th as the old family had been paid for then but when we discovered the knife cuts we decided to move immediately. The new house feels much safer and just looks much less shady in general. Even better, the people there actually talk to us, whereas the old family treated us as tenants and never said anything (technically worse as you don't usually steal stuff from tenants). I'll post a picture comparing the two rooms next time I write. I hope everyone back home is doing well!

- Jim

Heading out to Sabana Grande

This Friday, Tim and I will be leaving to spend the weekend at Sabana Grande where the other UD students are working. While we are just going to visit and hang out, I'll explain what they are doing there for those interested:

At Sabana Grande there is the solar center where the "Mujeres Solares" work building various types of solar ovens and apparatus for cooking, drying fruit to sell, and various other purposes. The UD group is working to combine the solar heat in an oven with a pressure cell to create a solar autoclave that can be sold to rural clinics for equipment sterilization.

Speaking with some of the UD people there, we will be mostly doing sightseeing and other various fun activities while there (swimming, a housewarming party, fun gringo stuff, etc.) I really don't know much more than that but I'll be sure to write all about it and add some pictures once I'm back.

In other news, we might be moving to a different host family due to the few things that have "disappeared" from our room, some of the unsavory conditions (yesterday the shower was infested with 300 ants and a large cockroach, and a few other small things. The family seems nice, but we've had some trouble with him wanting us to pay more than we should be also.
For instance, we wanted to use a fan at night as it is ridiculously hot here. He said fine as long as we paid for the electricity. This seemed odd as we pay Suni who in turn pays him. Then, after 10 days here he said we owed him 150 cordoba ($7) for electricity which seemed high. Douglas at Suni did the math and we found that the most the fan could use in a month is $5 worth of power, and that he isn't allowed to ask us for money, he needs to go though Grupo Fenix (Suni is a part of this) if he has monetary issues.
We'll see what becomes of this.

One other thing of note, I do have a phone here that can call the states if anyone wants to talk; it is free for you to receive the call so just leave me a comment with your number.

As I said I'll write more when we get back.

- Jim

BATS!!!

Just a quick update, I opened the fridge today and this guy flew in.
We couldn't get him to leave by kicking the door so Tim got a big cloth and threw him out.
I'll write more later, in a hurry now.

20 Days in!

Yep, today marked the twentieth day of our little adventure, and it's time for an update.

As far as work went today, it was mostly more of the same: cutting rebar to various lengths, though we also got to cut bundles of wire into 6 inch segments with the hack saw. As you can imagine that's not very effective.

But we've had many interesting events as well.
Yesterday we went to the Mercado Roberto Huembles, an open air/ flea market center that sells just about anything imaginable from food to art to other novelties. It was a very interesting place, and it seemed safe as long as you kept your wits about you. The market itself is half outdoors and half an open air ware house like many flea markets. There were entire sections devoted to farmers goods; meats and vegetables and fruits (also their horrible salty cheese). One interesting area was devoted to shoe repair, and the workers were repairing everything from tennis shoes to the common leather work boots.

While there, Tim and I each bought hand made hammocks (rather large ones I might add)
which we haggled to 20 each. Sorry that I don't have any pictures, but we plan to go again before we leave and I'll take a camera then.

Another interesting and ironic story, Tim was yelling at me for smashing ants today, calling it "senseless destruction of life." 20 minutes later we walk into the Suni building and he starts screaming and says his chest is burning, pulls off his shirt and finds that an ant has bitten him 4 times on his chest and shoulder. Tim doesn't protect ants anymore...

Sorry this is short, we only spent about an hour at the market, so I'll write more about it and give pictures next time we go.

Also a side note, these geckos are everywhere which is good for us as they eat the bugs. They do however make a loud, bird like call at night. I'll try to get a clearer picture later.
Until then - Jim

Addendum:
The other day I had allergies and the guy at our host family noticed and wanted to give me "limonada pura" which is a local remedy. I took medicine before but I said sure to be polite and because this translates to pure lemonade. Little did I know he meant half of a glass of pure lemon juice...

Giving an update

To be honest not much happened this past week, but the powers that be demanded an update, so here it is:

For the majority of this week, we had nothing to do. We were waiting for money to arrive from the E.U. for a project that they are sponsoring and it took much longer to get here than it should have. So finally it arrived Thursday and we were able to do some work Friday. All that we did then was cut rebar with a hack saw (this is possibly the worst method of cutting rebar as we went through several blades) and while this was boring, it is the necessary first step in the project.

The project itself is a mass of 42 installations of seven 120 watt panels each. Each of the seven panel units will power several houses, so they will not be placed on roofs, but on 5 meter tall towers for the sake of centralization and security. This is where the rebar comes in, as it is the foundation to pour the concrete base around for the tower. This requirement of the tower complicates the process as most of these are destined for the east coast, which is hard to reach, and the weight of the concrete bases will mandate the use of a semi truck to transport them. Once you near the east coast, the roads are usually unaccessible during the rainy season, so we will have to float the components on a river boat to get them near the installation site. These systems once complete should provide a good bit of power the places that have no chance of being incorporated into the power grid anytime in the foreseeable future.

Some other observations:

The Suni Solar building is semi open to the outside, and they have two trees growing in the middle of the building. We found leaf cutter ants crawling all over one of them which were quite interesting. Watching the work we saw that they never cut more the 2/5 of any leaf, as if they knew not to kill the plant. (You can see a semi blurry picture of one above.)

People are accoustomed to using non-ripe fruit. We have been to a few farmers markets and much of the food is not yet ripe since it's not quite the right season for many of them, but most of the cooking we've had useing this fruit as been good. For example, we've had a lot of lemonade made with small, green lemons. It was good because the compensated and added more sugar, making it taste normal.

Later on either today or tomorrow we are looking at going to one of the craft markets in the city; if we end up doing that I'll write another update about it.

Until next time,
- Jim

Playing with the local kids

A few days ago and then in last night, we played some games with some of the local children on our street. It started with Tim and me just throwing a Frisbee back and forth for about 15 minutes, then about 5 kids about 10-12 years old just showed up and wanted to play. For kids who had never played with a Frisbee before, they (mostly) learned to throw it well remarkably quickly. There were still a few errant throws in the bushes, or the fence, or on top of the fence, but the kids were remarkably good at climbing barbed wire. (against our recommendation of course). After we had thrown the Frisbee around for a good 20-30 minutes, they of course wanted to play soccer. Our "street" (there aren't cars on it) is only 12 feet wide mind you, but they still managed to find a way to play. As expected Tim and I were completely worthless, and the kids just seemed to have fun running circles around us. From this, we progressed to a game sort of like dodge ball that they like. There are two throwers (Tim and I for the first game) on either side of the "field" and the kids were in the middle. Each had 3 lives and every time they got hit they lost one. The throwers on each side try to keep the ball moving as fast as possible to keep the players running and changing direction. It was interesting, and trying to hit a bunch of tiny 10 years olds is harder than one might expect. Finally, we finished with a game they called ping pong which was a mix of volleyball and keep it up. They drew a chalk line and put teams on either side of it. The object was to set the ball back and forth and not to let it hit the ground on your team’s side of the line. Tim and I want to teach them to play ultimate Frisbee someday; we'll see how that goes. I'm sure we will play again sometime and I'll try to get some pictures up.

We will be at Suni Solar all of this week so I should have net access for at least a little bit each day.

Back from the second trip

Hello to everyone again,
We just got back today from our second trip, which was mostly revisions and fixing old systems. I'll skip most of that since I already mentioned the basics of the work we do.

One highlight was fixing a road that had eroded away too much for the truck to cross. Obviously we waited on the other side of the chasm, and the driver managed to back in to the corner, turn and pull forward after some careful construction i.e. tearing at the dirt edge with shovels to make more space. (See the included pictures)

Also, for fans of Oregon trial, we never caulk the wagon and float, preferring to ford the river.

There were a could aspects of this trip that made me rather irritated:
First, Tim and I speak decent Spanish and can understand people fine if the talk slow-ish and CLEARLY. The guys and the first trip realized this and we did fine, the guys on this trip refused to change (horrible grammar I might say, they say och instead of ocho, or noch instead of noche for example, very hard for someone who's studied proper spanish grammar to understand) and instead devolved to pointing and grunting, which we both found rather demeaning. Also they decided to do a night installation - this makes no sense as you can't test the panel - and we didn't get back to the city until midnight, at which point the inn was full. Rather than drive to the next city, they decided to sleep on the porch to the inn. Tim and I found the ludicrous and unsafe, so we "slept" in the truck cab (not much better).

A couple of observations:
Everyone here has technology regardless of their economic status: Most of the farmers in rural areas had cell phones and the ones with solar panels had a tv/dvd player hooked up.

Tortillas are eaten like a dinner roll. On the first day Tim and I filled them with beans and rice and got laughed at.

Nissan makes good trucks. That truck we we're on has been through more that any one truck should, and we only came out with a bent fender from driving over a boulder. I don't know why we drove over a boulder but it seemed like fun at the time.

Nicaraguans are masters at switching out tires. We blew a tire on one of the trips, a stone dug into it. With in 5 minutes we're were back on the road. However apparently they aren't good at repairing them, as we had the tire "repaired" and it blew out again the next day.

Orange fanta is their idea of heaven. This stuff is everywhere, even more popular than pepsi or coke with the locals. I can't complain, it's good stuff, but I still prefer diet pepsi.

Illegal music and DVDs are 10 times easier to buy than legal ones. Kids with back packs of burned DVD's and CD's line the streets of all of the cities trying sell them. Apparently the police don't care - most of it is Nicaraguan music, so this is a little surprising.

Finally, I've mastered the art of discretely pitching any drink given to me by a local at an installation without them noticing (we can't drink the water here).

Hope everyone is well!

We finished the first installation

Wow, we just got back yesterday from the first installation and it was quite a trip.
We did a slew of 3 installations over 4 days in the mountains near the Honduran border. Each installation takes about 3 hours do to, but because the areas are remote, it took a while to get there. You can see from the pictures below what a finished system looks like, from the inside and outside. The panel is bolted to the roof, and inside the charge controller, battery, and power inverter store and dispense the electricity. The ride was very interesting and long. We have some great pictures of what can't be described as anything other than jungle while we were driving through the mountains. The whole country side was beautiful.

Along the way we noticed many interesting aspects of the culture here as well. For instance, it's not uncommon to have someone jump on the back of the truck to hitch a ride up the road for a few miles. The driving was as crazy as one would expect, but a little better than in Honduras.

The thing I found most interesting is that when buying things, people seem to put they're house last. Almost everyone, even in the rural areas is well dressed and has a cell phone (these are cheap here, mine was $20). Also there are many nice looking cars on the road, but many of the houses leave some to be desired. In addition with this, all of the houses more or less look similar in any given area, but many of them; at least in the major cities are nicer on the inside than they look on the outside.

The hotels that we stayed in were decent by Nicaraguan standards; they had a closed in room, bathroom, and a shower with an instant heater the made the water lukewarm at best, but it was only $5 per night.

I will say that the food here has been amazing. They're staple is Gallo pinto, a kind of rice and beans mix, and they serve it with avena, a drink made from sugar, cinnamon and nearly liquefied oatmeal (it's a watery drink, not thick). Also, chicken, potatoes, and plantains are common foods. The only problem is that there is no fruit; we plan to buy some next time we go to a supermarket.
The one food they serve that I don't like is the really salty kind of cheese, but everything else is very good.

The first day:
This was a driving day, we took about 5 hours in the truck to get to the city Esteli.
This day was mostly highway driving, so it wasn't too bad other than the length. On the way, we passed through the city of Matagalpa. Both Matagalpa and Estile seemed nicer than Managua, and I think you kind of see the same thing in the US: Washington D.C. is a horrible city other than the area immediately near the government buildings. Here we stayed at hospedaje 5 for the night, which was decent, and then got up at four thirty the next morning to go. One thing I should mention about time, is that although we are 2 hours behind Ohio, the sun sets and rises at the same time i.e. sun rise is a little before 5 and sun set is 7, so the times aren't really any different than what we are used to.

Day 2:
We drove out into the mountains; the road quality was horrible, but our driver was good about slowing down for pot holes and the like. The first two installations were right next to each other. One was a house/pulperia (mini store) and the second was a small church next to it. The house was more or less what you would expect, wooden, not the nicest, but the church was very clean, it was simple, but clean. We installed an 80 watt panel in the house and a 120 watt in the church, both with 4 lights and an inverter.

Day 3:
Today we returned to the same area, and installed a 120 panel on another church, this one slightly bigger. Again there were only four lights, but they also had a basic sound system for use with a Mic ( I assume it was donated ) that they wanted to use with the power inverter, so this system had a bigger battery than the others to accommodate it. After this, we drove back out of the mountains and returned to Esteli to spend the night there again, before finally returning home and relaxing the next day.

I'll attempt to upload more pictures as it is really to only way to describe what
we've seen. I should be back on in a few days, I'm not sure when we'll be back at Suni next. I hope you all are doing well!