Its been a month

I know its been a month. I haven’t posted and its all my fault. So I am just going to use this entry to catch you guys up on everything that has been going on. I am probably notorious for my long blog entries, but I think this one will take the cake, so get a comfy chair and read up.

Its been pretty busy and my trips to the internet café have been fewer. I also got into the habit of trying to write my blogs in the café while I was on the clock and that’s a bad thing. I was finding that I just wouldn’t have enough time to write after I got all my other work done. Ok, enough excuses, I guess I just mean that I am sorry to our blog fans, now back to business.

Where to begin? I think I wrote about all the big organizational meetings we had in Managua to plan for the next quarter of projects and the 2008 annual plan back at the very end of September. Out of this meeting came a lot of excitement and forward momentum on the projects. Since that meeting it has been very busy for the leaders and volunteers, which is a good thing. If there is anything I hate it is not knowing what I should be doing and being bored and unproductive while I am here donating my time for a year. We are finally getting organized and getting things done, which I have learned is completely out of character for a sustainable development NGO, especially one on such a tight budget. Hopefully we can help turn that around.

The biggest project is the Solar Center, which is the one Jenny is helping to manage. We have $8,000 left on the grant for the project and a million things to do with it. Basically all the volunteers and leadership team is involved in executing this project for the next quarter. We have finally finished a beautiful building now complete with a ceramic tile teja roof (these are the tiles that are somewhat characteristic of tropical places and look like halves of ceramic pipe lined up next to each other.) The Solar Center has a gorgeous maroon tile floor and beautiful hand made solid wood doors and windows – all made by my expert carpenter host Don Marcio.

Now that we the building is done you would think that we can blow the $8,000 on all kinds of other good projects, wrong! There are so many details left to consider. One is that we have to build up the earth around the foundation so that we can create a reasonable slope away from it and prevent water from pooling at the base. This means that we will have to truck in dirt from somewhere. We need a permanent pump house instead of just a hastily built wooden shack. We need furniture for the inside, a front gate, money for taxes and permits, fix the entrance ramp, and save some money for the big inauguration on Dec. 12th.

We also realized that security is a big deal and our building has none, except for doors and windows that have dead bolts. In Nica, its important to have security, the polices are few and far between, especially out here in the country. Anything that doesn’t have bars in front of it has a good potential of being kicked in or broken into, expecially if there are valuable items inside. We are hoping to use one of the rooms for an office, which will have computers and such. We will also have one room as a stock room with all the wood and other supplies for the work shops. Another thing that we decided is that we will have one room designated for the PV panel workshop and assembly. This means that we could have thousands of dollars worth of PV solar cells and equipment such as batteries and charge controllers in the building as well. Long story short is that we need good security.

I have been put in charge of the security plan along with another volunteer from Canada, Noel. The challenge is that with the teja tile roof, it is very difficult to have a secure building. The tejas are just set up on the roof one on top of another and the bottom row is cemented in. The rest can easily be lifted up and someone could descend down from the ceiling into which ever room they choose. The other volunteer couple here (Charlotte and Johnathan) have already been a victim to this; they had a laptop, mp3 player, and camera stolen while they were away on a weekend trip. Noel and I are the right guys for the job and we have got a great, crazy security system all planned out. First we are going to have motion sensor spot lights on all four corners of the building. This should deter most approaching people because it is something very uncommon for Nica. We will also have a simple alarm system with a couple motion sensor lights inside that will be set off if any one enters the building. I have no idea how this is all going to work with the bats, large bugs, and stray dogs passing through the perimeter and occasionally inside during the night; hopefully we won’t drive the neighbors nuts with our lights and alarms. In addition to the motion sensor systems we will also put up the ever so popular berja, which is fancy metal bars, over the windows and ceilings of two secure rooms. The secure rooms are the office and “bodega” or stock room. The other problem with the teja roof is that it is like all other adobe buildings in Nica and it has a 6” gap between the top of the wall and the roof. Also, on the sides of the roof, where there would be a large triangular opening if you didn’t fill it in, there are huge triangular openings. Anyone with a ladder can just climb up the wall and jump in. So to combat this problem we are going to install a matrix of welded rebar over our two secure rooms, which will appear much like a drop ceiling made of a metal grid. It should be relatively unnoticeable and it won’t contradict the classic adobe architectural intent of having an open aired breezy building that is naturally cooled. I have to say that this building is sweet to sit in. It is easily the coolest building around, which is a big advantage when the temperatures get to mid 80’s daily and higher in April and May. The solar center also already has a chest high barbed wire fence around the perimeter of the whole property. We will be putting a large locking iron gate, big enough for a truck to pass through, in the opening of the fence along with a small door for people to enter. Our final security provision will be a guard shack on the front corner of the property. We plan to install all of our systems as soon as possible, then once the solar cooker and PV workshops get up and running with a stable source of income, we can pay a company for a professional security guard every night. The reason why we are so worried about security is that before I arrived they had already installed a solar panel with a pump for the well to help them get enough water to make the adobe bricks. The PV panels are very expensive and the one 75 watt panel was mounted on top of the pump house, which was stolen one night. This was a huge setback for the community and we can’t afford to have that happen again. I forgot to mention that the entire solar center including all the power tools and saws that we will have for the workshops will all be run completely off grid exclusively by solar PV electricity. That means we will be hooking everything up to 12 Volt DC power or a 120 Volt AC inverter. In the end the plan is to have as many as twelve 75 Watt PV panels outside. These PV panels and their support equipment have their own security strategy as well. The 2 PV panels that we currently have are mounted on a stand alone frame that is at the roof height. The panels were contrarily mounted onto the North side of the building solely for the advantage that the nearby neighbor, and member of the Mujeres Solares de Totogalpa, would be able to keep an eye on them from her house. We are planning to have every mounted panel be permanently welded to the frames, which are cemented into the ground so that they cannot be taken. Also, the batteries and charge controller will be placed inside a solid wood locking box inside the office, with venting for hydrogen off-gassing, of course. That’s our security plan, it will cost us about US$1500 to implement, with the biggest ticket items being the metal bars in front of the windows and above the secure rooms. I hope it works!

Along with the security project I have also been working with one of the local leaders, Nimia, on the Solar Production project. The Body Shop from England donated US$9400 to the women a year ago to help them start up their business of making and selling solar products such as solar cookers, solar driers and the products that can be made using them; like solar cooked food, and dried medicinal herbs. We have used about half of the money and I have to turn in a report in English (thank God) to the Body Shop on how we used their money and what we are planning for the rest of it.

One of the things that we have done recently with the money is carpentry training sessions for a small group of the women who will be building solar ovens and solar driers in the workshop. The course was taught by none other than our host Marcio. I attended the sessions to take photos and I also ended up unexpectedly learning a few things about carpentry. One thing that is very different here is that they don’t have a Home Depot where you can buy all your wood. The wood is all purchase directly from the guy who cuts the trees and prepares it. First of all the wood comes in very rustic fashion, its rough and in big blocks with no standard sizes for the planks. Everything has to be cut to size. If you want a 2x4 you may be cutting it from a 10x6. Also all the wood has to be shaved, smoothed and squared with a planer before you use it. I am so used to the wood coming all smooth and pretreated, and cut to standard dimensions straight from the store. I learned out to properly use a planer, which is definitely a skill that is developed over years of practice. In the end the women built two benches and two stools for the workshop at the solar center. All beautiful natural pieces made from solid pine.

The Solar Production grant has about $4,300 left in it and we also have a million things to do with a limited amount of money. Both type of solar production, agricultural and carpentry, need completed tool sets to be successful. We have planned to spend $630 on tools. We also are planning on having a series of classes for all the women to learn how to pack their dried fruits, herbs, and toasted coffee correctly. Along with learning how to pack correctly we also need the equipment to do it, so we have budgeted for a bag sealer, vacuum packer, and a label printer. We need to use some of the Solar production money to extend the telephone and cable lines into the solar center so that we can conduct a legitimate business with internet access for research and a land line telephone, which will set us back about $2000. We also need to use the money for research, design improvement and prototyping, more seeds to plant the herbs and fruits, and some money to move all the equipment we have from the personal houses of the Mujeres Solares to the solar center. So I have been working on this report and budget plan for a while. Another challenge we have to deal with is bureaucracy. For anything that we buy, whether its goods or services, we are required to get three written quotes before the money is sent from the office in Managua.
In addition to my involvement with the solar center security and the Solar Production grant, I have also been working on several other smaller projects. The summer volunteers from Cornell left some money behind for several projects around the community that they were unable to get to. One project is the reparation of the 28 solar cookers dispersed around the community. One problem that many women have with using the solar cookers is that some of them are old and damaged and others have broken glass tops that just don’t retain heat anymore. So I spent an entire week traveling from house to house to review each and every cooker individually and taking detailed notes on everything that wasn’t right. I also made a budget for the items we will need to purchase, including the three written quotes for every darn thing down to the replacement hinges. We have assembled a solar cooker reparation team and once the money is sent in from Managua we will buy the parts and probably spend two weeks repairing the ovens, just in time for the sunny season.

I am also still working on the scholarships for secondary school with a small committee of the women. We have written up a set of fair, objective selection criteria, complete with required activities for the recipients. Along with the new scholarships that will start with the new school year in February, the Cornell volunteers also left some money for a separate scholarship. So I have also been administering an essay contest in sustainable energy. If anyone is interested in donating to the secondary school scholarships please email me (cjcolavito@gmail.com) and I can tell you how to do it.

I know that being busy is no excuse for neglecting the blog, but its true, I actually do work hard here in Nica. The great thing is that even though I work hard, don’t get paid a penny, I have never been less stressed in my entire life. The occasional surprise tarantula crawling down the wall at night gets my heart going, but that stress is only momentary.