The Good, The Bad, and the Reasonably Creepy

So, we're back from extended trip #1 to Kahkabila.

Spent about three and a half weeks in the community, living with a really nice family (see kids below), working constantly, and, here and there, enjoying the beach, movie night, and trudging through the bush.

We got back Tuesday, and we'll be heading back Saturday for another three weeks. It's hard to put the visit into a single framework.

We don't have a ton of time to spend with the blog, but we did want to post some pics and try to at least give some sense of what we've been doing there. We'll try to post one more entry before we head back next weekend.

Teaching:

Since arrival, we’ve been teaching an evening class in US-style English classes for native Creole speakers. Our first class had about 60-70 people, which has settled down to a more manageable daily class size of about 20-30. The class is useful for Kahkabilans looking for outside work (cruise ships, especially, which is a huge source of income for some families) that require formal English fluency. We’re basically teaching the first night classes in Kahkabila, using lights powered by the bE turbine and solar panels, and trying to get another guy to start literacy classes.

Also, there was a lack of two teachers for the community’s secondary school (which is essentially the same as 7th and 8th grade in the States). Since the schools are full during the day and we had already the main block of our time in the evening booked up for English (people go to sleep around 8 or 9 when there are no lights), we’re now secondary school teachers in Kahkabila. We teach “Energy and Environmental Studies” for eleven class periods each week, plus a class on histories and storytelling.

bE-specific energy, water, and lighting work:

Abbreviated and bulleted for your reading pleasure…

• bE systems maintenance sessions with KKB energy commission
• Completed initial site assessment for bE water filtration project
• Metrics and usage assessment for the two existing bE systems
• Testing of home battery system (heavy!) and charging station
• Working with Thomas (community leader) to formally present results of a bE diagnostic study to the Alcaldia (local government), which will hopefully result in funding for a secondary school
• Successful site visit from HIVOS representatives (major funders)
• Completed field testing of greenlightplanet LED lights

The good:

• Filling out lack of teachers for secondary school, feasibility studies, and positive reception by the community
• Seeing greater organization: twice-monthly meetings, primary and secondary schools, coordination on clearing bush for the electricity company, etc.
• An acopio (big icemaker for fishing) in Orinoco, which will impact COOPARAAS members in Kahkabila and allow them to reach wider markets (besides juggernaut Mar Caribe), is mostly done.
• The cows and horses, as of March 2nd, will head to the fincas. Non-compliants will be fined 150 cords/animal. Less poop to follow.

The bad (for bE, but great for the community):

• The lights are coming! Expected arrival around March 15th.
• The water might be coming!? Governmental plans exist to drill Thomas' well deeper, possibly by April, and put in a 5,000-gallon storage tank and house-to-house plumbing, complicating bE's filtration project. Or maybe not. TBD.

The ugly and humorous:

• Large spiders with skull designs on their backs and/or intimidating wasps, now included free with every latrine!
• Coral snake found (and killed) outside the bathing room.
• Stories of rocks made by lightning, coral snakes biting with their tails, and the fairy boy of the jungle. More to follow later this week.

Hasta luego!, our budget´s approved.

Barring some vaguely catastrophic occurrence within the next twenty-four hours, by tomorrow morning we´ll be on some form of floating contraption headed in the direction of Pearl Lagoon, then onwards to Kahkabila. We´ll be gone until the beginning of March and, while there´s no internet access or any other amenities (stores, for example), we´ll have a cell phone.

Kahkabila consists of about 100+ houses with upwards of 500 residents. It is accessible by floating contraption or footpath, and its current sources of power are the two bE energy systems, along with a few personal solar panels or diesel generator systems for basic appliances. We´ll be staying in the house of one of the bE system operators. The wife of another operator will be cooking for us, though we´ll be transporting most of the dry goods up there. Combined cost for cooking and accomodations (in one of the nicest houses in KKB, says Ali) runs a little over $4 a day. While not yet a tourist destination, if they clean up the beaches (they plan to) and arrange some general services, there´s a great deal to like.

Our first and primary role will be, as mentioned, teaching, specifically formal English as a core curriculum for native Creole speakers. We´ll also be doing workshops on some mixture of health, sanitation, water quality (bE volunteers will be ramping up studies on a water filtration system while we´re gone, potentially to be introduced during our second trip), environment, nutrition, math, and basic accounting and budgeting.

Secondly, we´ll be working with the KKB energy commission on both maintenance and organizational matters, and evaluating a number of other energy- and income-related interests, including their tourism plans and additional energy system installations (in various forms). We´ll be testing and demonstrating different energy utilization and efficiency gadgets (like LED lighting and home battery systems), to determine what works well.

Third... We´ll be taking surveys, pictures, trying to learn everyone´s name, playing dominoes, playing baseball (poorly), playing basketball (worse), fishing, swimming, and just generally trying to hang out without being a pain in anyone´s ass. We´re working as a more immersive followup to all of bE´s previous efforts in KKB, plus planning our second trip.

Until March...
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Evidently, Sunday was Australia Day

Cricket is a requirement for proper Australia Day celebrations, even when said celebrations occur while you're in Nicaragua. We went along with it. Few pulperias reliably stock cricket bats, so plan on making your own. Also, it is best if the rules are explained in humorous, half-sensical Spanish, because no one is going to understand them anyway.

Intimidate your opponents with flying-crane, rum-hand cricket stance.

Scald them with piping-hot sopa de mariscos from Nereyda's birthday.

Or, just wait patiently until they give up and play futbol.  It won't be long.

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Decidedly Fictional Tuesday

There are countless things to prepare and organize for our first extended trip to Kahkabila, so postings have been set to the backburner. Items to collect and pack so far include: rubber boots, solar panels, buckets of dried goods and spices and oatmeal, teaching materials, LED flashlights and soldering equipment, machete, medical kit, toolbox, raingear, extra diesel, turbine monitoring equipment, rehydration salts, chlorine, and spare buckets.

In the meanwhile, Ken has been trading off rum-monitoring duties for occasionally getting some writing done in the evenings, and (as a few of you have already heard) recently got a short short piece of fiction accepted to an online journal, elimae. It will be posted around the 15th of next month. Given time restraints, the contraints of flash fiction have proven useful.

Below is something that hasn´t been published (an earlier attempt at the short-short form) and that, having been posted here, discounts it from getting published elsewhere and allows him to let it rest appropriately. Ali will post pictures from over the weekend (including a Nica friend´s birthday festivities) over the next few days, to maintain a semblance of balance.

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21 June, 2006
by K. M. Weaver

Only once have I fully experienced irony expressed in another language. The road heading to Marrakech could have gone elsewhere, past melon vendors, past pushcarts (past children riding horseback, pulperias, past Louisiana lean-tos…), seated beside her while she thumbed a book: "The Art of Listening." We paused at a roadside stand, where the pepper sauce could have sterilized the water and an attendant stood waiting with her bucket to wash away one's shit. GPS and cameras: hidden in the trunk. After they'd gone in, I was approached outside by an old man grinning widely and toothless, speaking only his native tongue. I spoke none. Most things here couldn't be understood with a thousand years. But, he continued: our shoes know the way, everything suggests that woman's bucket will keep her employed, and behind you there is absolutely nothing to fear.
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The Long Road to Kahkabila

(Figuratively, of course. There are no roads.)

After a preliminary visit in December, after a winter vacation no one bothered to mention to us ahead of time, after countless documents read and re-read and forgotten about and read one last time, for good measure, after bugs and oranges and piñatas and endless disappointments related to imbibables in general and an overall blog flippancy underscoring a slight rambunctiousness from waiting around reading, we're finally finally finally going back to Kahkabila.

Hold on to your turbines.


Current departure date is looking to be around February 4th, and we're organizing supplies for about a six-week initial stay. Then three-and-a-half weeks back in Bluefields (slightly longer than expected, but the Semana Santa week around Easter makes it difficult to get anything done), then another five weeks in Kahkabila, then two back in Bluefields.

Somehow, that puts us into June.

Widely: we'll be working with the energy commission (the community operators who maintain and manage the bE energy systems) and teaching. Formal English classes are of primary interest. We'll be teaching health and wellness classes (as suggested by the KKB doctor), along with classes on the environment, energy, sanitation, and basic math and accounting workshops. Ultimately, this will be working towards better utilization of the energy systems and building community development in a way that allows those in Kahkabila to have more control over where their community moves from here. They'd like to clean up their water supply, boost tourism, and improve their livelihoods, and we would like to help them do so.

We do not have a coherent closing today. We are giddy on Oreos and coffee and new-found project management, and we've got plenty to do.

Over the weekend, one should peruse the new blueEnergy site, which just went online a few weeks ago. If you look at the "about us" header and go to blueEnergy Nicaragua people, you'll see us!, as well as a link to our blog. From there, you can click on the above link to the new bE website, and then follow the above instructions to return here. Endless amusement.
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The W stands for "Waiting for Barack Obama to be President"

Obamanauguration: One More Excuse to Buy a Piñata

This morning, at around 10:30 Nica time, one nonprofit office inside INATEC (or at least a few of us) will sit quietly around a single computer screen to save bandwidth, in anticipation of an event happening thousands of miles and days of travel away, in a country that, for many, isn’t necessarily their own. They will wait patiently a few minutes longer, then perhaps a touch less patiently, for a slow internet connection to buffer the video feed, and during this time they will be thinking of the altered course ahead of them, ahead of all of us, the changing manner in which world affairs will be directed, considering the powerful words and refreshing honesty to appear whenever the video feed finally loads. I will be thinking about the piñata.

Sure, there will be many things to look forward to: an improved economic course, the closing of Guantanamo, the fostering of an American green-collar workforce, an intelligent and more transparent approach to world affairs. Health care, education, social programs. All valid and heartfelt reasons to celebrate, but, one has to ask, are they filled with candy?

Of course, this is to say nothing of intangibles: the endorsement against eight long years, the racial tug, the collapse of a right-wing politics, people in the streets, this feeling of elation, of feeling something other than numb. Being able to read the paper again. But, is that what I was really focusing on in the mercado, eyeing up paper maché forest creatures, salivating, thinking of that exuberance of being blindfolded and swinging a stick?

The Pooh-bear, for instance, overhead after the Iowa primaries should have suggested a sense of excitement outside normal bounds of political fervor. Inexpensive, it fell with a few hard thwacks. I didn’t even eat all the candy. November 2nd: a large white cat dressed in a ballerina skirt, spilling M&Ms over a freshly polished floor. It seemed appropriate, destined, at the time. Perhaps it suggested something much deeper than surface feelings, a certain unfilled void, maybe from childhood, maybe back to an emptiness even larger than the last two terms. Maybe. This is normally where a voice quiets into soft introspection, where the intensity before just simmers...

Maybe.

But, tonight, we’ll write Bush in magic marker and swing for the hills.
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