La Carpio

While I currently am on somewhat of a vacation, as I have no class until November 5 when Conservation and Development begins, I have been keeping plenty busy with D.C. job and internship searches for the spring, and more than anything with advancing on the projects that I am coordinating in La Carpio with my UPEACE classmates.

I've been involved in La Carpio (a poor marginalized community outside San Jose, at the site of the national dump) since visiting it the first time with my Food Security class in January. A group of us from the class decided that we should follow up with the community after conducting interviews with a number of families who left quite an impression on us, due to their determination, spirit, and willingness to share their sometimes heart-breaking and often inspiring stories, and also for the extremely challenging conditions in which many of them lived, dealing with extreme poverty, lack of services, issues with migrant status, and the environmental hazards of being surrounded by two flood-prone rivers and a dump that receives over 700 tons of garbage a day. Since March we have been holding meetings with CODECA, La Carpio's community development council, with the goal of collaboratively developing a number of initiatives aimed at addressing some of the community's key issues, such as environment and health, stigmatization by the national media, and food security.

As the only student from that group remaining at UPEACE this semester, I have been working on getting together a group of motivated new students who want to commit to working in La Carpio throughout the academic year, and to advancing with the food and environmental security initiatives which are the projects that I am heading up. Having recently contacted an environmental consulting company that is very interesting in lending their services to our projects, and having finished writing a proposal for a grant that would fund much of our work over the next year, things are really starting to move along. Yet there is much work ahead...

In addition, I recently published an article on La Carpio as a paradigmatic case of the structural and cultural violence that exists in Costa Rica in UPEACE's Peace and Conflit Monitor.

Please check it out:

http://www.monitor.upeace.org/innerpg.cfm?id_article=547

Anniversary in Granada, Nicaragua

When David and I left Bluefields we headed immediately to the gorgeous colonial city of Granada to spend our one year anniversary together. I'd heard so much about Granada- one of Nicaragua's hottest tourist destinations due to the well-maintained colonial architecture and relative prosperity of the city, in addition to the nearby lakes and volcanoes- and desperately wanted to visit it before leaving the country because it is so different in just about every way from Nicaragua's Caribbean Coast, and I was admittedly ready for a change. Costa Rica has no comparable cities either, so Granada was a must-see.

When we arrived in Granada ready for a relaxing couple of days of wandering around the area before heading south to Costa Rica, we found ourselves in the midst of a wild and crazy party (I believe it was the city's Fiestas Patronales) that included a parade with lots of horses, floats, blaring music, and scantily clad bleach bottle blond Nica women, in addition to thousands of people decked out in cowboy gear with Cerveza Tona in hand. We spent one rather overwhelming day watching the parade and drinking beers in the central park, but decided to take off the next day for an adventure outside of town and away from the chaos and crowds. We rented a pair of bikes and made our way down a rough dirt road to Laguna de Apoyo, which is a crystal clear lake in the crater of a volcano, surrounded by jungle. It was amazing! The water was so warm, so clear, and the sounds and colors of the jungle so vibrant and beautiful. Having gone on bikes rather than taxi, we ended up on a side of the lake that we had completely to ourselves. We spent hours soaking in the lake and did some hiking around in search of monkeys, toucans and the like, which I heard but never spotted. However, on our bike ride back into town, we did see a group of at least two dozen large green parrots fly over us squawking their heads off.
When we arrived back at our hotel in Granada we both had sore butts and sunburns, but felt great- exhilarated and happy. Being our anniversary and all, we decided to treat ourselves to a nice dinner out on the town. We were sure we'd picked out one of the nicest restaurants in Granda, but were pretty disappointed (thanks a lot Moon Handbooks!). The whole experience was at least entertaining. We had typical Nicaraguan food masquerading as Spanish cuisine, while serenaded by a band that included one extremely out of tune guitar and a lead singer with a penchant for cheesy renditions of Latin pop songs. After a bottle of wine we could do nothing but laugh at the situation. Ahhh...Nicaragua. Such a special place. You really never know what to expect.

Final Days in Monkey Point (back in August)

David with the 2nd-6th graders up at the wind turbine for a class on renewable energy.


Teaching a class on renewable energy to the first graders.



Teaching with bE's model wind turbine.



Some of the girls and me after a great class on sustainable development.


David showing off the lovely stone path that he made to our house (those damn cows and the rain made the walk home quite interesting)

So I thought I'd go back and start filling in this blog, which unfortunately hasn't been updated in over two months. David and I kept pretty busy during our final days in Nicaragua with blueEnergy, what with writing reports, discussing strategy for getting batteries into Monkey Point, defining future community relations strategy, and saying our goodbyes. On August 16 we took off for a few days in Granada and then home to Costa Rica. Since then we've been in classes and have been keeping busy. But now that we are approaching October, I decided it was time to update this thing! So here goes...

Our final days in Monkey Point were pretty awesome, despite the usual turmoil in the community, a few rare sicknesses, jealous monkeys, a dead guy washing up down the beach, a drug chase nearby, a couple of drunken community members, big wig politics coming in to talk about the construction of a mega-port, highway, oil pipeline, and dry canal in Monkey Point, the theft of cookies, oatmeal, and a hammock from our house....and well, why go on? Monkey Point is a crazy place, yes. Daily life and work there was often extremely challenging, sometimes depressing, sometimes scary, often inspiring. Above all, great people, great food, great beaches, and such an amazing yearning for education and progress amongst most community members. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, in so many ways. I miss it!
Despite spending the last couple of weeks there with painful oozing skin ulcers and a few days with strep throat, while trying to keep up with our work, I was so sad to leave. During those final weeks we continued with all of our classes (literacy, English, environmental and energy education) and work with the Energy Commission. Our classes with the kids on renewable energy were particularly fun. It was frustrating to have to leave knowing that with maybe 2 more months in the community the efforts toward literacy and increasing the community's understanding (and sense of ownership) of the renewable energy project could have been so much more effective. Our time there was too short. However, I do think we had an impact.
David and I spent our last week with blueEnergy in Bluefields writing reports and guidelines for future energy volunteers, trying to strengthen bE's community relations in general and ensure that our work in Monkey Point would set a precedent. No other volunteer had ever spent such an extended amount of time in a community or done such significant work (most volunteers going to communities do mainly technical work, often the community relations work has lacked in organization), and we wanted to encourage bE to build on our experience with volunteers working on the social aspects of their projects in the future. We also wanted to ensure that all of our work (and the work of the Energy Commission) on getting batteries into homes in Monkey Point wasn't in vain. We're still in touch with bE on this subject, and it sounds like the battery project is coming along. 10 households will be eligible for a micro-credit loan from ADEPHCA for a subsidized home battery package that will enable them to light their homes and run a black and white TV, as long as they make a small monthly payment each month in order to charge the battery with the community's wind and solar power at the charging station. David and I are both helping bE with this project remotely from Costa Rica. As happy as I am to be back in classes and at our beautiful home in El Rodeo, a part of me wishes that I were able to spend more time in Bluefields and Monkey Point in order to see this project through.

Snapshots of Life in Monkey Point

35 Days in Monkey Point

David and I returned to Bluefields on Friday in a dugout canoe with a 15 horsepower motor, which meant 6 hours of queasiness traveling up the coast from Monkey Point. It was definitely strange to arrive back in the city and find our senses overloaded by the amount of cars, people, garbage, noise, and stuff after 35 days in the bush plus 6 hours on the sea. And while there are some perks involved in being back at Bluefields (comfy bed, fans, cold beer, ice cream, delicious dinner and dessert parties with the other volunteers), I'm missing Monkey Point and am anxious to get back. However, we're making the most of this week by not only catching up on email and blogging, but also meeting with blueEnergy staff, figuring out what our strategy is for introducing batteries into the community for home electrification, meeting with the micro-credit organization who will be helping people to purchase the batteries, meeting with the Rama and Creole Territorial Government, working on reports, giving presentations, buying supplies for the next three weeks in Monkey Point, etc.

So what did we do in Monkey Point for 35 days? Sure, there was plenty of coconut eating and beach time as one might expect, but our first month in the community was actually quite busy with classes 7 days a week on literacy, English, the environment, and energy, plus our work with the Energy Commission in advancing with the energy project and ensuring that the energy system is benefiting the community in an equitable way. There have been frustrations, challenges, big laughs and huge rewards. I think that my happiest moments have been in the literacy classes, in which I have seen many students make huge leaps forward. The thirst that people (both children and adults) have for learning is amazing! Until the 80s (post-revolution) secondary education was illegal on the coast, and even today very few people have studied at all, many kids spend years in first grade (the education being so poor and the classes so few and far between that they never learn enough to pass), and it is rare that a teacher spends much time at all in isolated communities like Monkey Point. So having classes 7 days a week, rain or shine, is something new in Monkey Point and something people love! It's also an excellent way to be taking advantage of the power from the blueEnergy system- holding night classes everyday, in which at least a couple people from every single family are present. The benefits for the community are huge, and we're all enjoying ourselves. Of course it's frustrating to know that once we leave for good (August 7 or so), the community teacher will promise to take over our night literacy classes and continue teaching environmental education, but will probably not end up following through. He's overloaded, has health problems, and likely doesn't want to take on more work on a volunteer basis when he already makes a tiny salary. However, even if our classes aren't continued past August, I have seen enough progress in the first month that I feel confident in saying that we've made an impact. Lilian, a 28 year-old mother of 4 who never studied a day in her life until recently, has told me that she can feel her mind opening up more and more every day. When I arrive at her home in the mornings for private classes (in addition to the night classes that she attends), she is always out on her porch early with her books, studying on her own and eagerly awaiting our class. Every student in my class can now write his or her first name (up from less than half when we began classes) and many are writing their full names. Even if there are a couple who still don't know the vowels, I'm happy to know that when I leave, everyone in my class will be able to sign his or her own name.

The challenges of living in a poor rural community full of ethnic/racial tensions have of course been plentiful. The Father's Day party which David and I helped to decorate and prepare for with the children (this was one of my favorite afternoons!) ended up with two drunk men getting in a machete fight. While we have been safe and healthy, 3 of our chickens disappeared within the first two weeks, likely stolen. Luckily one hen who lays a blue egg every morning remains. Thank you to the thieves for leaving the only egg-layer of the 4 behind!

Perhaps the biggest frustration for us has been the difficulty of holding meetings with the Energy Commission. While they all arrived fairly punctually (within an hour of the starting time, which is normal) for our first weekly meeting, and expressed to us how eager they were to move ahead with the project and begin home electrification via batteries, only the two members of the Commission who currently have direct benefit from the system in the form of light in their homes have bothered to attend our other meetings. Of course I have begun to understand why for some, a sunny Saturday afternoon is better spent planting quiquisque than meeting with a couple of gringos who may or may not follow through with their promises to help provide energy to homes. We are lucky to have two committed members of the Commission at this point, and it seems likely that once there are other beneficiaries in the community (people who have light in their homes from the blueEnergy system), there will be more people truly interested in working with the Energy Commission.

There is so much more to say, so many stories to tell. It's been quite the adventure so far. In order to keep things short, I have decided to sum up a few other aspects of my time in Monkey Point in simple numbers:


Number of days in Monkey Point: 35
Average hours of classes given daily: 3
Number of pictures taken: 881
Number of times I have been spied on by a monkey while in the outhouse: about 30
Number of sea turtles seen bludgeoned to death: 1
Number of lunches in which sea turtle was served: 1
Time which must pass after the scheduled starting time for a class or meeting before people begin to arrive: 30-60 minutes
Number of days in a row without sun: 4
Number of mice who invade our house at night: sounds like at least 10
Feet scaled by yours truly on a coconut tree: just 5 or 6
Feet scaled by the average child on a coconut tree: 30-40
Average amount of hours spent in a hammock per day: 2
Average number of times that David and I go swimming in the ocean per day: 1.5
Number of households interested in purchasing batteries to electrify their homes: 20
Average number of Energy Commission members (out of 6) who attend our weekly meetings: 2
Number of times I was in contact with the world outside Monkey Point: 1 (via radio)

Goodbye Bluefields!

It's finally that time- we're leaving Bluefields for Monkey Point tomorrow! The past 48 hours have been totally hectic with last-minute meetings, shopping trips, and packing. In spite of the exhaustion I'm very excited for the trip. We have so many plans for the stay in Monkey Point- teaching, organizing, empowering, and just living with people, learning from them, and giving back what we can. It's going to be awesome!
I'll miss the yummy meals at the blueEnergy house, the air-conditioned office, the cold beer, the camaraderie of the fellow volunteers, and the Bluefields culture that I'm coming to love more and more. Yes, this city is an interesting, lively place. But what can compare to living in Monkey Point? Beans and rice fried in coconut milk, fresh fish, johnny cake, swimming, beach soccer, mangoes, not to mention the work we'll be doing with the Energy Commission and in the school. We're going to be busy! But it's going to be a good, fun busy. I can't wait!

So goodbye to Bluefields, the blueEnergy office, workshop, and volunteers. Goodbye to cars, loud music, cold beer, ice cream, pavement...the good and the bad... See you in a few weeks when we're back for a quick break.

Rondon!!!

I had some serious cabin fever until the miracle of rondon at Eloise's house occurred on Sunday. The blueEnergy house/office in which I generally spend 20-24 hours a day was just getting a bit old. I was going stir crazy! I can't spend that much time in front of a computer, sitting in a plastic chair, or in my bunkbed with the fan blowing on me, even if I am reading the final Harry Potter without going crazy! David and I have been going on the occasional run recently, which has helped. But its quite hard to motivate to run when its 80-90 degrees out from 8 am - 8 pm, or pouring down rain and the teensiest bit cooler. And of course the Palo de Mayo festivities have shaken things up a bit in the city. Its been fun attending the parades and concerts, seeing a bit of true Bluefields culture. But the festivities also meant that the streets have been even more packed than usual, with more drunk men and even louder music than usual! Of course that's Bluefields and I appreciate it for what it is. However, I was getting grumpy and needed a change of pace, and Sunday's lunch at a beautiful and quiet home on the lagoon cured me!

Julie (a fellow community relations volunteer here at bE) and a Spanish friend Monica went early to Eloise's house with red snapper, prawns, coconut, and lots of breadkind (plantain, yucca, quiquisque, and other starchy vegetables) to begin the long process of preparing rondon, a traditional coconut milk-based stew that is now my favorite thing about Bluefields! David, Seb, Charles, and I arrived later in the afternoon to find them still working hard- grating the coconut, preparing the fish, peeling shrimp and breadkind. Its a long and arduous process! But before long Eloise had everything stewing in a pot over some charcoal and we all retreated to the porch overlooking the lagoon with Toña and Flor de Caña. We lounged, chatted in Spanish, English, Creole, and French, drank in the view of the lagoon and jungley cays, and enjoyed the breeze coming off the water. I hadn't felt this good since we got back from Monkey Point!

When the rondon was ready Eloise served us each up a heaping bowl and we dug in. This has got to be the best meal I've had in Central America so far! The rich but not too rich coconut milk broth, the surprisingly flavorful and firm breadkind, the red snapper and prawns, and the smoked meat which Seb had brought along and added a wonderful flavor, was altogether amazing! It was so nice to be with friends on the water, eating good food. Its something I've missed. Sort of brought me back to my days in Peru, where Sundays were all about sharing huge plates of ceviche and beer with friends on the waterfront. I love food culture! Particularly coastal food culture... Its the most delicious!

So I've now fallen back in love with Blufields and am feeling better than ever! Getting away for the day and spending it in such a lovely way was more refreshing than I could've imagined. Just one more week here at the office and I'm now really trying to make the most of my time. Preparing materials for classes on energy and water and sanitation, shopping for supplies to last us 2 months in isolated Monkey Point, getting trained in the Yo, Si Puedo literacy system which David and I are going to be teaching, finishing up a report on the water situation in Monkey Point, figuring out a million little details (logistical and other), and of course taking the time to be in touch with friends and family who I'll be unable to contact throughout the remainder of the summer.

Hopefully we'll be leaving for Monkey Point on Monday, June 9th. I can't wait! Give me the beach, the jungle, mango trees, and fresh air!

Back from Monkey Point and Punta de Aguila

Bonboy lowering the turbine

The Aguirre family

David, Julie, and Lillian, one of Monkey Point's
community operators

Lillian's family


Rama boy in the Punta de Aguila school- these kids were awesome!

Got back on Tuesday morning from our first trip to Monkey Point and Punta de Aguila. Naturally, I've got lots of bug bites and some minor stomach issues, but overall am feeling great and anxious to get back to the communities. Bluefields is an interesting city and its a good time to be here considering the month of May is when they celebrate the May Pole festivities, said to be the best parties all year. However, its still a city, and while here I'm usually spending most of the day sitting in the blueEnergy office in front of a computer. Not my favorite thing to do. Getting up at dawn in Monkey Point, eating fresh tortillas and gallo pinto made with coconut milk, swimming in the Caribbean Sea, hauling buckets of water from the spring and wells, playing with kids and puppies, chatting with locals about their lives, the war, their families, their interest or lack thereof in blueEnergy's projects, playing soccer on the beach, attending crazy town meetings in which communal decisions are made on pigs, drugs, and who can live in the community and who can't, is all just so much more fun and interesting. I'm definitely missing life in Monkey Point, and am disappointed that we won't be going back for at least two weeks. However, we have a lot to do here as far as preparing ourselves and materials to take back to the communities to teach about energy, get the energy commission organized, hold meetings to find out what the community actually wants from the next step of the blueEnergy project (batteries, minigrids?), teach on water, health, and sanitation, as well as English. Ambitious, yes, and that's just the beginning. Next week we'll be going through training with the Ministry of Education's Yo Si Puedo system, an adult literacy education program that originated in Cuba. The program is already being implemented in Monkey Point at night in the blueEnergy-powered school with adults, but we're hoping to get more community members involved (very few are literate or have above a 3rd grade education if any), maybe teach a second class each night, and give private lessons to one of our community operators who is smart, motivated, trustworthy, and very capable of becoming a leader in the community and specifically with the energy project, but lacks the reading and writing skills to be given the responsibilities that we'd like to give her. So we're going to have a very busy two weeks preparing here in Bluefields, as there is a lot we'll be doing during our two months in Monkey Point. And that's not even taking into consideration Punta de Aguila.
I'm hoping to make the trek down the beach and through the bush to the Rama community of Punta de Aguila once a week or so while we're living in MP in order to begin the process of getting blueEnergy's project back up and running there. Communication has been a huge problem with this community where bE actually installed their first turbine, as it is an indigenous community that is accustomed to missionaries coming and going, but doesn't have a lot of experience with development projects that are ongoing. While its a settled community, people are constantly coming and going between the community and Bluefields or the community and the bush, so you never know when you arrive who you will find there, and if you plan to hold a meeting with the leaders as we did, you can't necessarily expect them to show up because our notion of making a plan is much different than theirs. I don't think blueEnergy has extremely high hopes of what can get down in Punta de Aguila over the next few months, but it would be helpful if David and I could make attempts to show up in the community and meet with leaders, help the energy commission to get reorganized, and just get people talking again about the energy project, find out who's interested, what next steps should be taken (if any), etc. Also, this week I attended a couple workshops on the Rama Language Project, and told the Punta de Aguila schoolteacher that I am interested in helping him to teach Rama in the school. Actually, it was more like once I expressed interest in the language a few weeks ago during the community operator training, he has been pushing me to attend these workshops, start learning the language (which I have been doing!), and to help him teach. During the bE community operator training, he said that one of the main things that PA wants to use the energy for is to have light in the school at night to teach Rama. Of course I find this fascinating and exciting, and extremely reminiscent of my time in the Moseten village of Inicua in Bolivia back in 2002 when I was working to get the community motivated to begin teaching their language again, to take pride in it, to not lose it. Well Colette, the mother of the bE directors Mathias and Guillaume, has been working on this project for over 20 years and now has materials that can be used to teach the Rama language. She too has been encouraging me to get involved in teaching the language, helping to build the Rama dictionary, and doing what I can to contribute to the language revitalization movement during my short time here. So while I don't expect to have much free time while I'm living in Monkey Point in June and July, I'm hoping to spend a couple of days every week or so in Punta de Aguila helping to support both the energy commission and the revitalization of the Rama language through teaching in the school to both children and adults, and collecting words, pictures, and ethnographic notes to add to the dictionary. Those two projects can and should go hand in hand.
I know I can't get too high of hopes for what can be done in just June and July, because really that's no time at all, but there is so much that I can do and that I want to do. Of course one important part of being in the communities is going to be just being. Sitting and talking with people, or just sitting and listening. Going fishing, going into the bush, cooking, playing with children. I can't get any "work" done without integrating into the community and participating in all those kinds of activities first, and throughout the entire time that I'm there.
For now, time to try and enjoy Bluefields. On Tuesday night David and I went out to what is probably the nicest restaurant in town where we ate lobster and prawns and drank Flor de Cana (tastiest rum in the world). It was quite the treat after Monkey Point, where hadn't even had the luxury of sitting down to eat together at a table. Not that I really minded that, but it was definitely fun to treat ourselves and really splurge. Although the food and drinks only cost around $30, that was definitely a huge splurge for Bluefields. It was worth it.
On Thursday we had our first night out, although David and I didn't last past 12:30 at the club. It was fun, but we've become so used to going to bed early and getting up early since living in Costa Rica, and are so content with that lifestyle, that its just hard to stay out late. My stomach issues don't make it any easier. The hour or so we spent at the club was definitely worth it though. The place, Four Brothers, is basically just a tin shack with a bar and a DJ blasting reggae and all kinds of Caribbean jams through very poor quality speakers. The place wasn't too full as it was still early and only Thursday, but the locals there seemed to be having a blast. All of the dancing was everything I'd heard I should expect in Bluefields- simulated sex. And this wasn't the kind of fast hip-gyrating sort of dancing that I've seen in other places. This was even more erotic because it was so slow. No wonder there are so many teenage mothers, even the kids do this kind of dancing! I'm looking forward to attending some of the May Pole festivities during the next couple of weeks and seeing how all of that goes down. Supposedly the parties are going to get better and better and then climax with the best one on the 30th. We'll see if David and I can stay out past 1 am for some of these. I think we'd better try.

Rama Cay

On Sunday David and I went along with Colette, the linguist and mother of blueEnergy who has been working with the Rama people on documenting and revitalizing their language since the 1980s, to Rama Cay.

The island is a fascinating place. There are over 1200 people on this tiny island, which was once actually two very tiny islands that were eventually connected as people dumped oyster shells between them over many years during the times of the British colonization. There are not many Rama speakers left on the island at all, despite the dense population of Rama people. Colette is hoping to get a new generation of teachers on the island interested in teaching the Rama language to the school children.

We watched Colette's slideshow homage to Miss Nora, a Rama woman who was one of the main speakers that worked with her in the 80s, played with the children, enjoyed the breeze on the north side of the island, and watched a bit of softball on the most beautiful softball field I've ever seen! I also learned quite a bit about the tragedy of the Rama, so similar to what has been happening to indigenous people all over the planet for centuries. Like every rainforest and every culture, the Rama territory has been plundered since colonization, and is now threatened by corporations involved in timber extraction, agribusiness, oil pipelines and dry canals. Yes, dry canals! There is currently a lot of talk about a huge project to build a dry canal from Monkey Point (where I'll be living, located in Rama territory), with railroad tracks, a highway, and an oil pipeline connecting it to the Pacific Coast of Nicaragua. Crazy, huh? The Rama and Creole populations of the Rama territory are currently working on an extremely important demarcation project where they are going to be making an official map of their territory which will give them greater leverage against the government, corporations, and development projects that are funding things like the dry canal. Its an interesting time to be here, to say the least. I'll be learning a lot more while I'm in Monkey Point and Punta de Aguila.

Bluefields, Nicaragua

David and I arrived in Bluefields, Nicaragua Monday morning last week after a long haul from San Jose on buses and boats. I've been sweating ever since.

This city built on a lagoon connected to the Caribbean Sea is a fascinating mix of cultures and languages, influenced by both the Spanish and British in the colonial days, hugely impacted by the war in the 1980s, with a large indigenous population remaining and a predominant Creole (afro-descendant) culture as well. Here at the blueEnergy office we are a team of about 11 volunteers from France and the US, with Nicaraguan staff, both Creole and Mestizo. So it is a crazy mix of French, English, Creole, and Spanish being spoken. My new favorite French word (one of about 4 that I know!) is pomme du terre (not sure on spelling) which is the fancy word for potato (yes there is a fancy word and a colloquial word) and actually translates to apple of the earth. I love it! It reminds me of Pablo Neruda's poem, Ode to the Potato, and I think its beautiful!
So David and I arrived just in time for a week of operator training, which was basically capacity building for the community operators of blueEnergy's wind/solar systems in the four communities where they're currently working. We were there to learn along with them and start getting to know the blueEnergy people, workshop, and systems. It was a great opportunity to meet and get to know people from the communities where I'll be spending most of the summer, and to learn about how the systems actually work. One week ago I knew literally nothing about electricity, how a wind turbine creates it, how to do maintenance on batteries, or anything of the sort. After 5 days in the classroom and workshop I am no pro, but I am much more confident in my understanding of how electricity and particularly how renewable energy systems (wind and solar) work. And the people from the communities are awesome! I spent the week speaking Spanish, learning how to speak and understand Creole (English with some Spanish words mixed in spoken with a crazy accent and very different grammatical rules than the ones we know), and learning some words in Rama and Moskito, two of the local indigenous languages.
We're currently preparing for the first trip to Monkey Point, the community where David and I will spend most of the summer. This trip is just 10 days, which we'll spend helping conduct a survey on community organization and women's participation, and just getting to know the community. Then we'll come back to Bluefields for a week or 2 to prepare for a 2 month stay in Monkey Point (and to enjoy the May Pole festivities- crazy booty shaking, loud music, and fun increasing until the end of the month). Monkey Point is a few hours south on the coast, in Rama territory. Basically I'm going to be very out of touch throughout most of the summer. While in Monkey Point David and I will be helping to organize the energy commission, teaching adult literacy in the blueEnergy-powered school at night, teaching school kids about how the wind turbines work and the basics of energy and electricity, observing and documenting the community's use of the energy systems, helping with basic maintenance and operation, and brainstorming with the community on the potential future uses of the energy once families are able to purchase their own batteries with the help of a local micro-credit organization.
I'm also hoping to spend at least a few weeks in the nearby community of Punta de Aguila, which is a small Rama community that is hoping to use the electricity to teach the Rama language in the schools. The mother of the two directors of blueEnergy is a French linguist who has been working with the Rama to preserve and revitalize their language since the 1980s. She's going to be providing me with some materials to take to Punta de Aguila. I'm hoping to work with the local teacher to start teaching basic Rama to adults and children, and I'd also like to work on a dictionary that Colette (the linguist) has started, adding more words as well as ethnographic information. It's going to be exciting!

Boren Fellowship: I'm going to Brazil!

I found out last week that I have been awarded a Boren Fellowship, which will pay for me to study Portuguese when I return to DC next year and then spend 9 months in Brazil studying the sugarcane ethanol industry and its social and environmental impacts. I will be mainly in Brasilia and Recife, as well as some of the rural sugarcane-growing regions around Recife in the northeast. I'm a bit surprised and of course overwhelmingly excited about getting to travel to Brazil- and have it paid for!!! This will mean that I won't actually graduate with my MA until spring 2010, as I have to be a graduate student during the entire time of the fellowship. It will definitely be worth it.

Monteverde with Mom

My mom came out for a week spent bird-watching and relaxing. First at my house in the foothills outside San Jose, where we saw oropendulas, blue-crowned mot mots, a toucan, and at least a dozen other species of birds in just two days! Then to the cloud forest of Monteverde, where we had several quetzal sightings! We had an amazing time hiking on our own in the Santa Elena Reserve (where we didn't see too much because we don't exactly have trained eyes, but did enjoy hanging out with the mostly domesticated peccary), going for a night hike in the Eternal Children's Forest (we saw sleeping birds- who's ever seen a bird sleeping??- tarantulas, frogs, and lots of interesting bugs), and then going on an excellent guided hike through the Monteverde Reserve where we spotted quetzals and many other beautiful birds, howler monkeys, a tarantula, a snake, and others. Overall it was a great trip. We were lucky to have a beautiful house to ourselves in Monteverde in which David, Mom, and I cooked delicious dinners, played hearts, sipped on wine, and observed the local birds and bugs. Unfortunately the end of the trip was quite rushed as David and I were taking off for Nicaragua the same day my mom was leaving for the US. We all made it to our destinations safely, and are now all very busy. The week relaxing and hiking around El Rodeo and Monteverde was an excellent vacation for us all.

Black background- saving energy!

Note the switch to the black background today. Not only does it look cool, but it actually saves energy. Something for everyone to consider when designing web pages and blogs in the future, especially for those of you whose energy comes from coal...
Here in Costa Rica my computer is powered by hydroelectric dams, which have quite a large ecological footprint in terms of habitat destruction, rerouting of bodies of water, and endangering most of the local fish species, but once they're built they have virtually no emissions. Similar dilemmas to those we face in the Pacific Northwest. Cheap, clean energy...kind of.

Anyway, in light of my current course (last class this semester!) on human vulnerability and climate change, and my upcoming internship working on renewable energy, I thought that I might as well change my blog background to an energy-saving color. Enjoy!

blueEnergy

It's official, I'm leaving for Bluefields, Nicaragua on May 5th to begin my 3 1/2 month internship with blueEnergy. I'll be working in rural Afro-Caribbean and indigenous communities on the Atlantic coast where blueEnergy has been working to install hybrid wind and solar energy systems in order to supply the people with electricity for community centers, schools, and their homes. My position is going to be a sort of community liaison, where I'll actually be based out of one of the small communities, doing evaluation and assessment of the project, teaching in the school on energy and energy use, and learning and teaching about the operation of the wind and solar systems.

Below is information on the organization and their work in Nicaragua from their website (http://www.blueenergygroup.org/):

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blueEnergy is a nonprofit organization that provides a low-cost, sustainable solution to the energy needs of marginalized communities through the construction, installation, and maintenance of hybrid wind and solar electric systems. blueEnergy manufactures wind turbines that are specially designed for simple manufacturing, robustness and efficiency in low wind speeds. blueEnergy manufactures the systems locally, near their point of usage, to keep energy costs low, improve equipment serviceability, and create employment where it is desperately needed.

In Nicaragua, blueEnergy’s initial project country, half of the roughly 5 million inhabitants do not have access to electricity; the situation is particularly grim in the Caribbean Coast region of the country where nearly 80% of the inhabitants go without. In part because of this, and in part the cause of this, the region is the poorest in Nicaragua, itself the second poorest country in the western hemisphere.
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Check out this awesome video on the installation of an electric system in Monkey Point in 2007:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK-7-ZSvTyA

I won't be one of the people actually building or installing the systems, but am hoping to learn something about that as well.

Gardening continued...

It's official- we have a garden! And even a few spinach, radish, and mustard plants beginning to sprout! We're leaving in a few weeks for Nicaragua, but hopefully we'll be able to munch on some of the garden goodies before then. As for the rest of the summer, our sub-letters and neighbors have offered to care for and enjoy the garden.
Check out the pictures below. This was quite the process, but things are looking good.

Gardening Costa Rica style: Machetes, Bamboo, Bee Stings, and Broken Pipes

So I'd been telling David for weeks now that I thought we should get a machete for the house, if not for whacking away at the out of control bamboo "hedges" in our yard, then just for fun or maybe for killing snakes. He was doubtful about our need for a machete, but since picking one up at the hardware store in town this week we've both developed blisters on our hands from going at the invasive bamboo that had begun to take over our yard and back porch. A machete may not be the most efficient gardening tool, but it sure is fun. And that is how Ticos (and most people in Latin America as well as other parts of the world) do their yard work.
After hacking away at the bamboo off and on over a few days, we discovered a sort of hidden garden next to the house. Earlier in the semester I'd discovered a giant oregano plant in that area and had wondered what else might be lying back there, hidden by the out of control bamboo. Indeed, we found a couple of spearmint plants, several aloe plants, and other unrecognizables. We got carried away today and spent hours clearing out the garden, enduring blisters, blood, two bee stings, and then breaking a water pipe. Yes, it was quite the adventure, a la Lynn. We were lucky enough to be able to get ahold of a local guy pretty quickly who came over and fixed the damaged pipe (after a bit of panicking over what to do of course). After that fiasco, I dragged myself down to campus to visit the UPeace nurse who gave me two shots- one in each butt cheek- for the bee stings that had together swollen up to the size of a watermelon, hot and throbbing, on my thigh. It was a productive and exciting day, although a bit painful. Definitely worth it!

Pictures of the garden will be coming soon!

Adventures in Blogging, Day 1

So I decided it was time to jump on the blogging bandwagon since I have so many pictures and so many stories to tell these days, and so many people who I want to know what is going on in my life. This is my first time blogging, we'll see how it goes.

As most of you who are checking this out already know, I'm currently studying for an MA in Natural Resources and Sustainable Development at the United Nations-chartered University for Peace in Costa Rica, as part of a dual-degree program with American University in D.C. After 2 solid years of school, I'll be graduating in the summer of '09 with the MA from UPeace as well as an MA in International Affairs from AU. Hopefully that will leave me set up for an awesome job, preferably somewhere in Latin America or on the West Coast of the good ol' U.S., working in the field of environment and international development.

I've been here in Costa Rica since December and have had many adventures already, from surfing the Pacific and Caribbean coasts to volunteering on a permaculture farm on the Island of Omotepe in Nicaragua (and many many things in between, including of course classes). I will soon be off on the next big adventure, which is a 3 1/2 month internship where I will be in Nicargua, El Salvador or Guatemala. Hopefully I'll be figuring this out soon, as I'm supposedly leaving in about 3 weeks. It's alright though, I'm on Tico (aka Costa Rican) time.

Now I'm going to attempt to post some pictures and other fun things here. Enjoy!