Arriving in Bluefields

Woo hoooo for 3rd world airlines! I took a flight from Managua to Bluefields yesterday that was by far the scariest flight I will probably every take in my life. There were a few times when a girl in the back of the airplane screamed out loud because the nose of the airplane pointed down a little too much for comfort, and everyone's stomach got to go on a little roller coaster ride the whole entire way. I found my own knuckles to be white a few times, but hey, we made it in one piece, and this time none of my luggage was stolen in transit.

The blueEnergy house is a giant 2-story cabina with an office/den/kitchen downstairs, and a whole slew of bedrooms equipped with bunks upstairs. There's a cook and a maid that look after the house, make sure the drinking water tank is filled with filtered, treated water, wash all our clothes, and basically manage the day-to-day household activities. Most of the volunteers live upstairs. It's like one giant family since we all eat all our meals together, and live where we work. The majority of the foreigners here (9 out of 11) are French, so I get the feeling I'll be learning as much French as Spanish while I'm here. Ben and I are the only Americans, but we're managing ;-).

The most intriguing issue I've discovered so far is the distinct shortage of water here. The house has giant rain cisterns that catch rain water that then flows through the faucets throughout the house (showers, sinks, toilets...). Since we're right in the middle of dry season, it doesn't really rain much, and these cisterns have a tendency to empty (yesterday we ran out again... yay! what fun!). The 2nd source of water that we use, then, is from a well down the street. This well water, however, is not potable, so we cannot cook with it or drink it (even if we filter and treat it). Essentially this water is good enough for showering... but that word is used loosely, since really what you do id dump bucketfulls of water on your head once in a while and hope that you get clean somehow. Well, anyway... the wells also have a tendency to run out, and guess what?! yeah, that too is empty today. The ultimate source of water that we have access to, in desperate times, is from the fire department. They come and fill our cisterns with water from their hoses. But we have to pay a hefty price for that, so we have to be careful. Fun fun.

Today I start my work for blueEnergy. I don't really know what I'll be doing, but for the next few days I have to get a sense of the organization, where it is now in working towards it's various objectives, and where I can pitch in. So far I've heard about a water-filtration project one of the engineers is working on, a microfinance/community effort being made to get families equipped with batteries to power their homes, and the turbines being constructed in the workshop down the road. Unfortunately I can't take pics of any of this since my camera no longer exists, but I will figure out a way to post something when I can.