7th Letter Home - Upcountry in Nica

January 30, or thereabouts and a snippet from Groundhogs day . . . .


Dear Friends and Family,

I was falling into a routine here in the country that, unfortunately, will be broken by the need to return to Managua. I already know that Managua will make me yearn for the countryside, where the air is fresh and there are beautiful pastoral landscapes and plenty of great hills to climb. I am living in a kind of dream, arising at 6 am every morning, and go to sleep by 11. When Martin has time, we go up a hill at 6 am and return around 7 or 7:10. Yesterday was the best hill yet, with pine trees sprouting everywhere and pine needles on the ground (one has to be careful not to slip, as they are wet and the way is steep), and views into Honduras. The vistas down into the valley are wonderful, the air perfect, and on the way up and then again at the bottom, lots of people to greet with an “ahdió” (adios – you recall that Nicas don’t say their Ss ---- (;~) Now that Martin is so busy with panel production, he starts at 6:30 or so to work, so today I went with Arely, my little sister.

I live so simply that I have to think about nothing in addition to work except to brush my teeth, wash my face at night, take my vitamins. We don’t have gas for cooking, so we can’t run out. We don’t have cars, so no broken down cars, no need to get gasoline. We have our feet and bikes (although I don’t have a bike, darn it!). We do have some electricity in this little concrete house, and that is great, because there hasn’t been enough sun at the center to keep all the batteries full for the PV production. The irony of that does not escape you, I am sure! The soldering irons (to weave together the panels along the copper/tin transmission lines that run atop each PV array) take up a lot of electricity because they have to be hot, obviously, and we had to move the cutting of the metal frames to another location altogether because that simply overloaded the system completely. I have been working at home in the mornings the last two days so that I can charge my computer for interviews or for my organizational work (we have a bit of electricity at the house and can charge from the bare light bulb in my room).

I have been as happy as one can imagine a person to be – up so early with the pigs and chickens and crying babies, taking a hike until 7 or so and then being with my family to explore language and what is going on . . . . to learn a bit about their history while eating a bit for breakfast, learning about fruits and vegetables, seasonal difficulties here with the rains, when the bombas in the community went in (I noted today when I was pumping water that the bombas – OH, sorry, that means water pumps, among other things) have a big USAID sticker on them. I was glad that at least the US does something worthwhile here and there. (;~) And believe me, putting in these bombas was definitely worthwhile, because just a couple of years ago, people lined up starting at midnight up a steep hill near here where water pooled naturally to get their water for the following day. It took all night for everyone in the community to get their daily water needs met in this fashion. Lots of work and lots of time. The bombas have changed life dramatically for the better.

I begin work around 8 am, but try to fit in an English lesson for Eddy and Arely first. The lessons are getting a bit more formal, as Eddy has a little book that is a great teaching aid. Arely learned her numbers from 11 to 100 in a day (she worked! And is smart!), and now we are on to building vocabulary and soon, I hope, verbs. But I have to go back to the city on Wednesday, as Susan, the director, wants me with her as much as possible and I will be in the city until she returns upcountry again on February 17 for a Solar Culture Course. We will be upcountry for another couple of weeks and I am sure I will be happy to return. And Eddy just left for 8 days to cut coffee on a finca, and when he returns, he will start school in Totogalpa for his last year of secondary school (thank god, because for the past two years this very smart and interested young man of 20 tried to study at home, but it is not conducive to study. And I won’t even start about the father. He is a terrible role model, not doing anything all day that I can tell, while his wife works her fanny off).

As I have said, it could be anything that I am doing from one minute to the next, but my main job is to help Susan figure out what to do organizationally with all the entities that she has spawned and especially with job issues at the Solar Center, at least for now. Then, I know she wants me to help her figure out whether and how to form an NGO here in Nicaragua for the Solar Center and the Women’s Collective of Totogalpa, whose it is . . . . It is really fun to look at what is going on from the outside without all of the stress of being on the inside.

I have developed my own organizational chart and a way to think about departments or accounting centers at the Solar Center, and from that I think I can develop job descriptions. How the right folks can be found to fill the jobs, and how on earth to pay them is another problem. But Susan has little pots of money here and there (some which she raised or gave to the Mine Victims organization), and also donates half of her $600/month salary to the work, so that buys a couple of people right there just with her monthly donation.

And what she has going on here is a development person’s dream, because it has all the makings of being able to be self-supporting and that is so exciting for me to see, after having NOTHING to sell all those years with American Rivers and having to depend totally on begging all of our budget needs every year. With the on the ground project in the Sabana Grande community (in Totogalpa, Madriz), they are moving the production and sale of PV panels into the Solar Center that was just built by the labor of the community, from hand-made adobe blocks on up. The niche market is using recycled cells, with Richard Komp, a guru in solar innovations, brings down here in suitcases from a company named Evergreen, in Mass – in a suitcase. They are broken cells that Evergreen can’t use and he gets a huge amount of them for a great price.

The Solar Center and the Solar Women of Totogalpa are also growing medicinal herbs and other food plants for drying in their solar dryers, and they are beginning to prepare solar cooked items for sale, such as solar roasted coffee and solar baked cookies. And they have already been making solar ovens and dryers for sale to the public. The mayor of Estelí recently bought 22 solar cookers. Solar Culture Courses, invented by Susan and others many years ago, are what is supporting them now (and volunteer fees for housing and meals supports the community and a percentage of that is shaved off to support Grupo Fenix and the Solar Women of Totogalpa/Sabana Grande), but one hopes that in the not too distant future, the Solar Women of Totogalpa/Sabana Grande will have their own nonprofit business that will not only be self supporting, but that will expand to give more and more people in this impoverished but spunky community more and more work, including those crippled by mines from the Contra war, which is how this whole project got started in the first place – as a way to provide employment to mine victims. Susan has been the moving force behind all of these developments and her life and work becomes more and more complicated it seems every day. She is no longer young (59) but has the energy and extreme grace of person to carry it all off, day in and day out, with poise, love, kindness, grace, and so much social intelligence that it is humbling.

(this is a snippet after we returned to Managua a few days ago) . . . She also has so many relationships with so many entities in and out of the area – this am she was up before daybreak to be at the UNI (national engineering university across from University of Central America (Jesuit) in Managua out of which she has created something from nothing, to host Solar Sabado, with guest (and the GrupoFenix’s technical adviser) Richard Komp, to a room full of people from all over Nicaragua and the world, really. This has been going on for 12 years, I guess. The lecture/presentation was amazing for me. It was so much information packed into two hours, and just the right amount and kind. It went from Nica, to India, to an east coast tribe in the states, to Haiti, showing how the technology grows and improves a little with each user group. And how cottage industries are being formed by these poor people in poor places that have the potential of electrifying their communities with clean energy and home made panels, employing peole in these communities while they produce clean, renewable energy for their daily needs, prevent deforestation, get rid of kerosene lamps and allow their children to learn to read and write and study. It is really exciting.

Even after a bit more than 2 weeks into this experience I am still getting chills on my body when I see how integrated and holistic the thinking is and the great potential and sense of empowerment that a community can get from learning this technology, producing it themselves and becoming entrepreneurs of clean energy. And the possibilities seem endless once you start thinking about what you can do with it. Anyhow, last night after a grueling day for Susan we went to meet with students who were spending a semester abroad with Center for Ecological Learning and Living or some such (CELL), which is working with Grupo Fenix for a month of its time and the students and David Oakes who started CELL will be up in Totogalpa with us starting the 17 of Feb., when Susan and I will go upcountry again for that course (meanwhile they are doing other things in Nica) . . . . She never stops.

The Solar Center is also getting interest in solar cooked meals from the “public,” which has them planning to build a restaurant with solar cooked meals The restaurant would be in the same complex as the Center is now, with other planned buildings, such as a PV production building, and more, on land that borders the Pan American Highway where the Solar Center is plainly visible. Susan bought this land . . . So the restaurant would be yet another self supporting entity with jobs for the community. It is all too very cool.

There is a need for biodigesters to generate gas for when the sun doesn’t shine, and a windmill or two would be appreciated. There is so much wind here in December and January, at least, that it is killing me that we don’t have enough sun to keep production going some days at the same time as the wind through the building blows the cells and cools the soldering irons . . . . . hmmmmmmm . . . . . . .

What I am doing here, really, is trying to help set up small businesses in the context of an NGO (to be, that is). It is fascinating to think about. I can see, however, as I said, that it is a fundraiser’s dream, because GrupoFenix (I will call it that for now – I won’t make you crazy with the organizational names and issues) will no doubt be able to raise money now from foundations to get all these things up and running with trainings for community people to assume the various jobs that need doing to support all of these ideas, and then, as each production center gets up and running, it will generate income to become self supporting. This is exactly what foundations like to see. It is SO exciting. The money maker right now are the solar culture courses, offered to foreigners, really, who have the money to pay the fees to come and live in this small, poor community and learn about solar energy and what it can do for poor communities to lift themselves up. There are also little self sustaining funds, like the nanofund for house improvements to be able to let families have volunteers and course participants live at their houses and earn income in this way. I just can’t write enough about all the ideas that are percolating here in coffee land.

However, I am more aware than I was as a complete innocent to the difficulties of seeing things change, the differences in work ethics, and how many roadblocks there are to what seem to be such small things (for instance, this morning, I asked why my family doesn’t have a solar cooker, and although Reina says she wants one, and has 400 hours accumulated of volunteer time in the Green Store (another very cool concept I may have mentioned) and could buy one with her work hours, she doesn’t have a fenced in area in which to put the cooker and is afraid that the kids or the animals, both of which wander all over the “yard,” might damage the cooker, so first she wants a fence. Do you spend what tiny bit of money there is on that fence, or on shoes for Eddy to go to school this year (or for Arelis)? We in the first world do not face these questions. We go out, buy the fence, put it in, get the cooker, get the shoes, no worries. And I just want to go out and buy the stuff. But this is not the way to do things.

The way things are being set up and accounted for, and the transparency Susan is trying to institute in all things, and the policy of getting something only in exchange for work, make just giving things away a bad idea. I can give to the scholarship fund; I can give $ to increase the Nanoloan fund. And I will. But boy, do I ever want to go out and buy that fencing, because now, every other day, Hollman goes up to my favorite spot on my favorite hill and cuts wood for the wood stove, which then emits wood smoke to our eyes and lungs (no chimney yet. Costs $20. You get the picture).

And seeing in person the things we read about – poverty, illiteracy (at least my “father” Simon is illiterate and I don’t know about Reina. It is hard to say about Hollman, one of the three kids, 18 years old), and the steady cutting of the forest for firewood for cooking just in my house (Hollman brings a big pile down from the hill every other day; multiply that by every house in the community) -- makes clear if it wasn’t before the critical need for solar cookers and food dryers here. How to get people to use them is something else again. It is a completely different style of cooking and not a reliable one. They still need a lot more development. .

My organizational thought work, and interviewing volunteers to see the pieces of work that are going on from their perspective -- what people do, what isn’t being done, what they would change, and the like -- is part of this process, too. I try to chat a bit with people from the community about things at the center, but I don’t feel like I want to do that formally just yet. First of all, my language difficulties are an impediment. BUT I have to tell you that when I interviewed Julio yesterday, who is from Spain and who is super bright (a PhD in physics), he said that he still, after 5 months, as lots of difficulties with communication. Not only is Nica difficult, but country people are not grammarians, either, and Julio is a superperfectionist kind of person, fastidious in all things, so I feel better when EVERYone tells me that they have trouble understanding the folks here. It is a step backward from Leon and Granada.

[ PS: this is a miracle – the day we returned to Managua, I actually acted as a translator for Mauro, one of the community members, for our Canadian clients. It was a surreal evening. More of that evening later in the next letter! ]

I work 7 days a week and am happy to, especially when I am in the country here, as everything takes time, and it is beautiful time, walking to the center and interacting with people, hiking, eating my little meals (I finally got the portions down to my size and feel much better physically), but my mind is turning to thinking about whether SOMEday I might get back to Granada, at least, or Leon . . . I would LOVE to go back to Ometepe and get a bike for the weekend and ride all around the island, and visit with Jose (my young friend on Ometepe), but that may just not happen this time around. BUT I am ALREADY thinking about when I can come back to Central America. I am clearly in love with it. I better not go to El Salvador or to Panama because then I might have FOUR countries I am in love with instead of two that are pulling me back and forth.

ANYHOW, if I am not doing this thinking and interviewing, which I LOVE, I am cutting PV cells, or putting together frames for the panels, or cutting and striping electrical wire, or finding and cleaning tables for work space for the panel parts or doing something else for Martin at the solar center while in production for the Canadian order, who the project manager for this rush order that Susan just agreed to without really consulting anyone for delivery in a ridiculously short amount of time. Two issues here. Why did she do that? She is the mother of all of this activity and realizes that decisions just have to be made sometimes or nothing will ever get done. They wanted to start the PV shop at the center, and she tends to go at things from the “let’s just do it” school, which is great, and it is how I am/was in my work. And although there are problems with this approach (like, people were working a LOT of hours), much if not everything is learned from doing, and failures are the best teachers. A caution about this is that failure is so inbred in the lives of people here that not a lot of failures can be weathered. But it appears that this production is not/will not be a failure. More of that later . . . . .

Susan, at least for me, has just the right amount of involvement with me. I was with her day and night, basically, for the first few days, until she left for the city. I have been here on my own for 3 or 4 days, and had a pretty good idea of what I needed to do, both because of her needs that she told directly to me, and from what I have observed. It is a wonderful feeling to be working with someone who has just the right “touch” of communication of needs, personality, and allows me to use my mind and my approach to come at it. We will see if this works for her and her needs. She just told me tonight (she is back upcountry and we will return tomorrow to Managua for a couple of weeks and then come back up here on the 17th of February) that she likes having someone she can talk to as a human being and not as a boss, so we share family stories (about our parent’s deaths and other things) and we both know we are good sounding boards for each other and neither one has to feel “unequal” or has any reason to be anything but honest and helpful. It is a nice feeling for both of us. And I am having a great time working and thinking about this stuff, and am very high on the possibilities of Susan’s and the community’s vision. Of course there are problems and there are going to be lots more – that is growth, that is life, and that is what working in a different culture presents and what makes it interesting and allows one to have a beer every now and again!

Martin, my young German friend, who is just a kid, but a brilliant and interesting one, apparently explored the internet for music related to his upcoming experience in Nicaragua, and found some tune by the Andrew sisters from god knows when. As soon as he started talking about it and told me it was about Managua, Nicaragua and by the Andrew sisters, I could practically sing it without knowing it at all (we ALL know what the Andrew Sisters’ stuff sounds like, right?). Unbeknownst to me, Managua used to be a hot place for people to come to party from the states and other places. Now, it is just plain hot!

Like Havanna, Managua has a rich history of hosting the party crowd from the states, then socialism, and many beautiful, unspoiled landscapes. Its center, however, was lost during the 1972 earthquake that killed 40,000 people. It is something to think about, this once playground for the rich and fabulous, now the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere. We are, here, all poor together.

But I, at least, am happier than I have been since the first week or two in October. So much happier. Susan, it turns out, appears to be the director and person I had hoped to find in Ignacio. Life is strange – and wonderful. And I realize that I am finally fulfilling the assignment I got when I was 22 years old from the Peace Corps, but decided at the last minute not to go . . . . . This scares me a bit, because the other major piece of unfinished business in my life is raising a kid. (;~)

Much love from Nicaragua,
Kahty