The First Day of Real Work

Today I felt like I was back in NYC. My first day on the job was basically a day of orientation. I had a meeting with Guillaume (the big boss man here) and talked about where the organization is heading, how my skills can plug into the organization's vision, what I hope to do/learn, and blah-beh-di-blah.

I spent most of the day talking to the different volunteers already here, and figuring out what exactly it is that they do. One girl is focusing on formalizing the training of the volunteers, the local talent, and the coordinators in the communities that we serve. A guy is trying to figure out what kind of water filter is both most effective and most practical to build here (with local import restrictions, material restrictions, knowledge restrictions, cost restrictions....) and how we can make them affordable enough to sell to the local community members. Another guy's focus is the technology of the turbines. He's the tech guru, and knows everything about the turbine and the wind flow. Another guy is the electrician dude. He knows all about how to convert the energy from the turbines into something appropriate for storing, and how to store the energy in the most effective way.

It appears that I'm the only volunteer here that has any experience in the corporate world. Guillaume mentioned a few ideas he had about plugging me in on the logistics/business/processes side of the organization since I've been a part of a large multi-national organization, and could help with developing policies and processes for blueEnergy.

Who knows... we'll see. Tomorrow I have a meeting with the CEO in Cali, and we'll discuss some more.

As for the water situation... we got the fire men to come and fill our cistern today, so we have enough water for a few days now. The pump in the well went out because the water in the well dropped so low that the siphon was lost. Fixing the pump required Guillaume to be lowered into the well (a good 50 feet down) to fiddle around a bit. When we discovered there was only a few feet of water left, we pumped it all out so that Guillaume could clean out the silt from the bottom of the well (who knew you were supposed to do that once a year?) and get it ready for the rainy season (which apparently starts next month or so).

Anyway, dinner smells good again today... I'm definitely not going to mind having french cooks all over the place!