Success! The wind generator is up in the air, producing a (wee) bit of electricity, changing with the wind directions, and stopping when wind speeds are too high (to avoid snapping the blades). I am very proud and satisfied with all this.

I have received a few emails wondering if I am just completely frustrated with the volunteering or if I am enjoying myself here. The answer is definitely both. The entire journey has been a truly amazing experience for me. It is hard to believe that it is actually ending very soon. Working at the Solar Center has been very frustrating throughout my stay here (although there have definitely been some good days). It has taken a very long time for the community to really understand and accept our project as being useful to them in the long term. There has also been some clashes with another personality (another volunteer) that has made the work more difficult than necessary. BUT, I am feeling very satisfied that our project is working (when nearly everybody said it would not work or that we would not have enough time) and the community realizes it is a positive (and big) step for the center as well. It is also true that I had no real idea what to expect with the ¨volunteering experience¨except I knew that it would be an experience – and this has proven true. I knew it would be different, challenging, at times hard, etc. I had no way to anticipate what would be challenging or hard or what would frustrate me or anything, but I now understand and appreciate much more than I did when I arrived 9 weeks ago. I see all these things as positive for me.

I have less than a week left at Grupo Fenix, leaving either Thursday (maybe Friday) morning. I will spend about a week traveling around visiting favorite places before heading back to the US. I will be in Boulder for a few days before heading home to Alaska. I will try to have more pictures posted in the image gallery by  tomorrow morning, but I doubt I will have time to blog or add more pictures before arriving back in the US.

UPDATE: New pictures of the wind generator are being posted here.

A lot has happened and not much has happened in the past weeks since my last post.  The big news is that our little wind generator actually produced a bit of electricity on Thursday afternoon.  It was actually working on Tuesday, but WE (the ¨collective we¨which very much means ¨me¨) placed it on the side of the shed to drink a bit of coffee. A gust of wind came up and blew it over resulting in a busted blade.  We decided to redo the blade with a double thickness which I think will be much more stable in the long run.  The next steps are putting the foundation together, getting it into the air, and figuring out some way to control what little flow of electricity it produces.  The staff at the Solar Center seem pretty excited about it and we have definitely generated a bit of interest in the project.  Needless to say, I am pretty proud of the work we have done and we are doing.

The past weeks have also been a bit frustrating with the volunteering experience.  I have had the feeling that the work done will just sit around and not be continued or utilized.  This is especially true for the rain gage and weir (I still need to put that together).  I have had some other issues with the staff, the appearance of the center, the apparent stagnation of the mujeres (woman´s cooperative), etc.  However, after some long discussions with people within and external to the center, I am starting to feel like I am moving beyond the frustration and starting to understand what is going on a bit better now.  I think this is pretty true of the whole Nicaragua experience – many of the things that really bothered me at first have very little effect on me now (best example is dealing with the overcrowded busses and bus stations in general).

Nearly every weekend, we travel to some new part of Nicaragua. Last weekend, we went to Laguna de Apoyo which was pretty amazing place to relax.  It was very much needed after a very frustrating week.  This weekend, I am back in León (with a quick visit to the beach) for another extended weekend. I have added some new pictures of Sabana Grande (beginning on the 4th page), Laguna de Apoyo, and the wind generator.  After this weekend, I have only 3 more weekends (3.5 weeks total) left in Nicaragua.  Time is definitely flying past me.

The other yikes:

• Spanish school: 4 weeks, done
• Christmas/New Year Holiday travel: 2 weeks, done
• Solar Culture Class: 2 weeks, done
• Volunteering with Grupo Fenix: 8 weeks, 2 weeks complete.

I have just completed the 10th week of my 16-week journey to Nicaragua. It is crazy how fast the time is passing by.

The projects we have taken on are now starting to move. At times, it has been a pretty slow process – hard to get an email reply to questions, hard to get approval, hard to find anything, running in circles, etc. However, our first wind sock should be in place by Tuesday, the rain gage has 4 days of data (recording 1 mm precipitation), we finally found a motor for the wind generator in Estelí (where I am now for the next couple hours), and the anemometer and data logger are on their way up from Managua. I really expect we´ll see some concrete progress in the next week or two.

The internet is slightly better here in Estelí than in Ocotal and I have finally been able to post some more pictures from the Solar Center (where I work) and the Sabana Grande (where I live) region.

This week, the first of eight, was spent trying to figure out what we are exactly going to be doing here. In the original planning, I thought we would be learning how to build and then be installing solar panels in the community that we live in. However, this turns out not to be the case and we so we have spent the week researching various ideas of what we can do, what we are really interested in, what we can afford (we have no budget either), and trying to incorporate that into what the community needs.

Our first idea was to build a hybrid wind/solar battery charging station at the center. I was very excited about this idea for about exactly one day. After talking with a few people, it became very apparent this idea with not very feasible on a number of levels. I think that one of my biggest challenges in working here is overcoming my zero experience base to drawn upon. After doing a bit more research, I think we have a plan that will be pretty challenging. Our plan is to 1) build a cheap (hopefully around $150) wind generator that can be used by the community using parts readily available in the community (pvc pipes for blades, etc.); 2) define the wind resource using low budget method (homemade wind socks is a possibility); and 3) define the water resource on a low budget. The hope is that the wind and water resource projects will continue beyond the stay here by the new student research team that occassional shows up at the center. I am excited to really start working on all these projects early next week.

One pretty cool thing we did this week was help install a solar powered water pump in a nearby town. I really like learning and seeing the possibilities available. I have a number of ideas that I think would work well in Fairbanks.

This week has been a bit rough on me health wise. I have been here about 8-9 weeks now and I have been pretty paranoid about the foods I eat. However, on Sunday night I let my guard down. Not exactly road side chicken, but I ate a steak with a cream sauce. Tasting good, I forgot that refrigeration systems do not exist in many places here. Sunday night I was feeling it in the middle of the night and the process of the food exiting my system was not nearly as pleasant as when I was eating it. Having learned from the road side chicken experience (resulting in days of a bathroom that glowed a florescent lime green color in Manzanillo), I immediately took some drugs to stop the flow. So this experience was not nearly as bad as the last one. I also managed to catch a bit of a cold this week. Both pretty minor on the whole.

I am still having problems finding an internet cafe to post my pictures.  I have a few posted here – still about 20 that I want to post sometime, but painfully slow right now.   Hopefully soon.

UPDATE:  A couple weeks ago, Mareike struck gold and managed to get $150 from Grupo Fenix for our project.  We are at about $200 for the wind generator now, so this really is a big help to us.

The people here are quite short and most of the homes are custom made with low doorways and adobe bricks. The combination of short people, custom houses, and me constantly walking with my head down has resulted in me uttering ´shit, that hurt´ many times. However, having my head down does not explain why I continually manage to fall into holes in the road or trip over very obvious rocks. One night, I managed to find a hole, turn around to see what had just happened to me, and then proptly walk (hard) into a barbed wire fence resulting in big scratches on my stomach, arm, and leg. I think either the gallo pinto is starting to effect me in ways I had not considered or I am just spending a bit too much time in ´La La Land´.

Last week we finished the Solar Energy / Culture class put on by Grupo Fenix. The class ended up being fairly disappointing and frustrating on a number of different levels. The class was divided into three basic parts – solar energy instruction, the culture of the community where we are staying, and activities outside the community. The community definitely bent over backward for us and the outside activities (day trips) were also really nice, but the solar energy part was more than a bit rough. From talking with other people, I think we ended up with just a bit of bad luck and/or timing as many other people have had many many good things to say about the group and Grupo Fenix. This week, we start the real volunteering. I still believe that working with the people at the solar center will be a really good experience and I am excited about this chapter of the journey. Even with all the bad from the week, I still built a small solar panel from scratch and helped with a very simple solar power installation at a home. That in itself I think is pretty cool.

Following the class, we spent a long weekend at the beach community of Las Piñitas, near Leon and adjacent to the beach that we were at a few weeks ago. Once again, the beach did not disappoint – lots of sun, sand, swimming, good food, long walks, few people, a number of naps, and a kayak trip into a wilderness preserve.

I tried to post some pictures, but finding an internet connection with decent speed to upload pictures is going to be a challenge. I will try again later this week.