At 4:00 AM on the morning after my older sister Monica's graduation, I (along with 11 other UD Engineering undergraduates, 1 graduate student, and 1 professor) made my tired way to the Dayton International Airport for my departure. After a very punishing semester, summer was finally here, and by "here", I mean Nicaragua. Organized through UD's homegrown ETHOS organization (Engineers in Technical, Humanitarian Opportunities of Service-learning), the 14 of us immersed ourselves into the Nicaraguan culture while learning and working with renewable energy and appropriate technology.
Although the national transportation strike provided an unforeseen challenge, we made our way from the capital of Managua to the small village of Sabana Grande, near the northern border with Honduras. While in Managua for the first few days, we met with students at the National Technical University (UNI- for Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería) and exchanged research presentations with each other. But it was in rural Sabana Grande where we spent the bulk of our 11 day breakout living with host families and working with the women's solar group to build solar ovens. These ovens were designed with the goal to wean rural Nicaraguans from cooking over wood fires in enclosed spaces because the contained carcinogenic fumes of inefficiently burnt wood can have serious health affects to the women and children, those most likely to spend time in the kitchen. Everyday, our lunches were prepared in similar ovens, which in the Nicaraguan sun are able to sustain temperatures of 150 degrees Celsius or right around 300 degrees Fahrenheit. These temperatures are high enough to kill food bacteria like salmonella in chicken, which is exactly what we ate, delicious and salmonella-free chicken. After about 3 days of work building the solar ovens, we tackled photovoltaics.
The solar community that we were living, learning, and working with had organized themselves in such a way that established their own little labor-based economy where the currency was the hour worked. After a few years of working to build solar cookers, the buildings, and permaculture farm from which they operated, some of the women had accumulated several hundred and in some cases more than a thousand hours worked. These hours could then be used to buy items from the green store, which was stocked with inventories brought by groups like ours with clothes, books, school supplies, soccer balls, and cooking ware. The hours could also be saved to purchase a photovoltaic system for a home. In preparation for our own installations, we visited several homes that already were being powered by solar panels. The consumption was meager, as only 3 or 4 compact fluorescent or LED equivalent lights were being powered by the solar cells, but it was able to make an incredible difference. Kids could now read at night, study after dark, or just share some time with friends and family. It was truly inspiring to experience what passion, vision, and organization can accomplish, as all of the PV systems were assembled and installed by local villagers by small solar cells that didn’t make the cut at their original producer in Maine. It also gave us a better value for the service that we were providing through our installations, as the materials necessary for the two PV installations that we completed were paid for by the cost of our breakout.
Before we ended up flying back to the States, our service-learning part of the trip yielded to a few days of traveling, where we were able to see a little bit more of Nicaragua’s natural beauty. We spent one night tucked in the mountains near the city of Esteli, where we hiked through the lovely pine forests. Our last night was spent on the heart of touristy Granada, where we were preyed upon by the manifold of street vendors. Between the boat tour of the inland mansions on the lagoon and patronizing the overwhelming number of foreign-owned restaurants and bars, our time in Granada provided the just the right amount of irony and comparison to better digest the real motivations for our time spent on breakout.
While this post certainly can’t accurately account for my 10 days in Nicaragua, I did keep a decent journal while I was there, so I’ll try to post those later on. That way you should be able to get a more thoughtful, as opposed to factual account of my time spent under the Nicaraguan Sun.
Although the national transportation strike provided an unforeseen challenge, we made our way from the capital of Managua to the small village of Sabana Grande, near the northern border with Honduras. While in Managua for the first few days, we met with students at the National Technical University (UNI- for Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería) and exchanged research presentations with each other. But it was in rural Sabana Grande where we spent the bulk of our 11 day breakout living with host families and working with the women's solar group to build solar ovens. These ovens were designed with the goal to wean rural Nicaraguans from cooking over wood fires in enclosed spaces because the contained carcinogenic fumes of inefficiently burnt wood can have serious health affects to the women and children, those most likely to spend time in the kitchen. Everyday, our lunches were prepared in similar ovens, which in the Nicaraguan sun are able to sustain temperatures of 150 degrees Celsius or right around 300 degrees Fahrenheit. These temperatures are high enough to kill food bacteria like salmonella in chicken, which is exactly what we ate, delicious and salmonella-free chicken. After about 3 days of work building the solar ovens, we tackled photovoltaics.
The solar community that we were living, learning, and working with had organized themselves in such a way that established their own little labor-based economy where the currency was the hour worked. After a few years of working to build solar cookers, the buildings, and permaculture farm from which they operated, some of the women had accumulated several hundred and in some cases more than a thousand hours worked. These hours could then be used to buy items from the green store, which was stocked with inventories brought by groups like ours with clothes, books, school supplies, soccer balls, and cooking ware. The hours could also be saved to purchase a photovoltaic system for a home. In preparation for our own installations, we visited several homes that already were being powered by solar panels. The consumption was meager, as only 3 or 4 compact fluorescent or LED equivalent lights were being powered by the solar cells, but it was able to make an incredible difference. Kids could now read at night, study after dark, or just share some time with friends and family. It was truly inspiring to experience what passion, vision, and organization can accomplish, as all of the PV systems were assembled and installed by local villagers by small solar cells that didn’t make the cut at their original producer in Maine. It also gave us a better value for the service that we were providing through our installations, as the materials necessary for the two PV installations that we completed were paid for by the cost of our breakout.
Before we ended up flying back to the States, our service-learning part of the trip yielded to a few days of traveling, where we were able to see a little bit more of Nicaragua’s natural beauty. We spent one night tucked in the mountains near the city of Esteli, where we hiked through the lovely pine forests. Our last night was spent on the heart of touristy Granada, where we were preyed upon by the manifold of street vendors. Between the boat tour of the inland mansions on the lagoon and patronizing the overwhelming number of foreign-owned restaurants and bars, our time in Granada provided the just the right amount of irony and comparison to better digest the real motivations for our time spent on breakout.
While this post certainly can’t accurately account for my 10 days in Nicaragua, I did keep a decent journal while I was there, so I’ll try to post those later on. That way you should be able to get a more thoughtful, as opposed to factual account of my time spent under the Nicaraguan Sun.
1 comment:
what a truly wonderful and ecologically sound venture! we need more solar power in this world if we are to survive. thank you so much for being a part of the solution!
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