AKA The country side...
Tomorrow we leave Managua for our respective villages. My destination is Malacatoya (in the municipality of San Jose de los Remates). Through my program, volunteers are usually paired off, but because of some last minute road blocks in our program, I will be thrown off the deep end by myself. While other volunteers have a fellow gringo to help them through and share their learned mistakes with, I will be on a solo adventure. Honestly, I couldn´t be happier. The whole reason I volunteered for this project was to be pushed out of my comfort zone.
If I had to define stepping out of ones comfort zone, I would say "living for two months with a new family in a small village in the mountains of Nicaragua, being forced to speak only in a language I know very little of, learning their culture, being completely disconnected from everything I´m used to, all the while learning the workings of an already operational microhydro turbine so that I can test and monitor its operation to improve its efficiency and output, while at the same time teaching them about how to use electricity wisely."
On top of this, I also have several side projects. First of all, I am designing a solar water distiller to provide purified water for refilling deep cycle batteries charged by solar panels (for the village of Corozo). Secondly, I am helping to improve (and develop fail safe features for) an existing wind turbine design from previous volunteers that is made from modified pvc tubing and steel water pipes.
Lets do this!
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