First Week

The first week in any new location is always a challenge of new faces, proceedures, habits and adventures, but my first week at blueEnergy was further amplified by a whirlwind of ativity that began only a few hours after arriving. Most of the chaos was due to the fact that for the first time in history, all 3 co-directors of the organization, as well as 'mama blueEnergy' were assembled in Bluefields. To make things more exciting, they were commencing their first official operator training program to teach members of outlying communities the intricacies of wind turbine maintenance and management. This meant that, also for the first time, the leaders of all the communities in which blueEnergy operates were assembled together. Despite the challenges posed by instructing an eclectic group of individuals who each have their own prefered first language and varying degrees of comprehension, literacy and interest, the volunteers and workshop members diligently transfered their knowledge over the course of the coming week. In addition to all this excitement, and more important to my person agenda here, the head of INATEC, the national university that runs the local technical college which has partnered with blueEnergy and provides workshop and classroom space as well as transportaion and coordication, was to arrive on friday. But, I'm getting a little ahead of myself, so lets back up to that first night in Bluefields.

After a very refreshing nap and a quick (cold) bucket shower (the only kind of shower available), David, Lynn and I wandered down to the living room and chatted for a bit while other volunteers raced back and for intent of 15 different projects and attempting to mobilize for the training that was to commence in the morning. As the evening progessed, we slowly met each member of the household, some of whom have been here for the long haul and others who were only passing through for a few weeks. We also came to understand that dinner is always an impromptu event that happens whenever someone decides it's time to cook an takes the initiative to do so. Seeings as everyone else was more than overwhelmed with preparations, David Lynn and I took it upon ourselves to manage dinner. Slowly navigating through the foreign realm of a new kitchen with only fresh ingredients and basic stocks of rice, beans and noodles, we pieced together a lovely meal of spagetti in a spicy tomato sauce. All the other volunteers were more than grateful to sit down for a hot meal at a table overflowing with individuals from France and the US. After a lively dinner with stories of all variety being flung around the room (well, the covered patio as it's far to hot to sit down for a meal indoors), most people adjorned to the office for last minute preparations while a few of us, including Guillermo, the local director and his brother, Mathias, the head honcho for the US side of operations, cleared the table and dolled out the cervesas for a few raucous rounds of beer pong.

Somewhere along in the evening, after a few beers had been had, Guillermo pulled me aside and started to explain his vision for CERCA (Centro de Capacitación Ambiental), the project that I was brought here to oversee. Over the course of our discussion, it became clear that this center is a much larger project than I had previously imagined. It will include not only conference rooms and offices for blueEnergy, but also offices for other organizations, a 200 person auditorium, a dining hall for at least 200 ppl, a large kitchen as well as a smaller teaching kitchen and guestrooms. Overall, the concept is to create a center that would provide facilities for outside organizations to collaborate on various projects, to accommodations for visiting specialists as well as a training facility for hospitality services. All of this will be incorporated into a showcase for sustainable living that will include all renewable energy sources, water collection filtration and treatment, composting toilets, natural lighting, ventilation and cooling systems. In addition, the grander vision is to carry the same themes into smaller CERCitas that would be built in the communities and house batteries, volunteers, specialists etc. Feeling both incredibly excited and rather overwhelmed, I eventually said goodnight and laid down with my head still spinning full of cascading thoughts and visions.

The rest of the week passed in something of a blur. Since the head of INATEC was to be here on friday to discuss the possibility of actually building CERCA, I was immediately thrown into creating a presentation that included basic shematic plans and sketchs as well as a powerpoint exemplifying the benefits that could be reaped should this program go through. At the same time, the days remained hectic with migrations to the INATEC campus for communal lunches, presentations on various aspects of blueEnergy and the systems they provide as well as a lot of cooking for 15-25 people, gatherings every night that generally progressed far into the night. To make things just a little more exciting, all the taxi drivers in town decided to go on strike, so going anywhere meant walking through the scorching heat to arrive drenched in sweat and exhausted at your destination. Nonetheless, friday came along, the day of meetings went well, CERCA was signed off on by INATEC and I got a few minutes to breath.

Friday evening was consumed with a fabulous meal of beef boullion with a specialty potato dish from a specific region of France prepared by one of the many amazing guests we had over the week. After dinner, Colette (mama blueEnergy) enthralled us all with a wonderful presentation of her work studying the Rama language that started in the 80s and eventually led to the creation of blueEnergy through a series of events that I will have to go into at another time. Her presentation was interspersed with harrowing tales of being held at machinegun point by the Contras, living among the Rama in isolated villages and introducing Miss Nora, a Rama woman who helped to save the Rama language from extinction, to the luxuries of life in Eugene, Oregon for a short time.

The following day, the morning was spent preparing for a graduation ceremony to honor the community operators who had completed their training over the course of the week. After the ceremony, Stephanie and I snuck away for a small shopping tour of 'el centro.' Only mildly successful, we decided to drop by the Bluefields Sound System residence and say hi to a couple friends who live and work there. We sat on the porch and enjoyed the seabreeze while listening to Reggaton mixed with a few classics. On the way back to the house, we dropped Xander and Edwin off at a barrio party at the end of a dizzying network of winding alleyways. The fiesta was part of fiesta de mayo, a month long celebration that involves lots of crazy dancing, a maypole and copious amounts of flor de caña, the local rum (which happens to be delicious!). We got back to the house in time to start cooking before our own party was to begin. As we were cooking, a member of the documentary film crew that had a arrived a few days before and happened to be a world class bartender, began mixing various coctails with fresh mango, passion fruit, blended bananas and all sorts of delicious additions.

As soon as everyone was fed and happy, the BSS boys showed up in time to organize a dancing movement. As a group of maybe 20-25 people, we all departed casa blueEnergy and made our way downtown to the happeningest club in town, Cima. There, we sweat our way through the night gyrating to Reggatone music on the crowded dance floor. A few hours later, I found myself in the hatchback trunk of a taxicab with 2 other people while 5 more rode up front, driving with the door open while holding the taxi speaker on my lap and racing across town to Four Brothers, a dimmly lit shack with music and lots more crazy dancing. Somewhere around 2 or 3am, Staphanie and I decided that we'd had about all we could handle of the sex-on-the-dance-floor style that predominates the clubs and we headed back to the house. Unfortunately, we forgot that there aren't enough keys for all the volunteers and neither of us currently had a set. So, when we got home and found the gate locked, we had the joy of scaling the chainlink fence in order to get in. Luckily, a few people were still up over at Guillermo's house (one he's in the process of building just behind the main house), and were willing to let us into our rooms.

The following morning, a large contingient took off early for RamaKey, an island off the coast where lots of exciting things were to be happening. As I had no real reason for attending, Stephanie and I had made plans to meet up with the workshop boys for an outing to Gualaterra, the local swimming hole. However, when we got up, only one of the managed to show and he soon wandered off to who knows where when it bacame apparent that we were going to be moving rather slowly for the morning. Undetered, we managed to kidnap Lâl, the head of blueEnergy France, and convince him to lead us through the jungle to the mythical pool of water we'd been dreaming of since first learning of it a few days earlier. Hiking up over the hill behind our house, we were greeted with a stunning 360 degree view of nearly continuous rainforest, broken only by the blue of the bay. Marching down the oposite side, we made our way down a steep incline to an oasis of water complete with waterfall and several locals already enjoying the refreshingly cool water. Completely drenched in sweat by the time arrived, I couldn't wait to get in the water. Watching a few kids jump of the cliff and dive headfirst into the relatively shallow pool, I decided to follow suit, minus the diving headfirst part. I'm not sure I can describe the sheer joy of feeling cool for the first time in week. The unrelenting heat and humidity that had hounded us for the past five days was suddenly a thing of the past. We spent the morning enjoying the estatically refreshing waterhole until the influx of local families became too much to handle and we decided to call it a morning.

On the way back to the house, we wound our way through dirt paths that cut through backyards and banana groves and found ourselves thirsty enough to stop for a beer a few blocks from home. one beer quickly turned into more when the table next to us decided to buy us a second round, at which point we were socially required to return the favor. So, a few glasses later, we meandered our way back into the sunshine and found ourselves at home. Thoroughly relaxed from our excursion, we lazed about in hammocks sharing stories and enjoying the quiet of an empty house.

As everyone returned from their trip to RamaKey, a housewarming party was beginning over at Guillermo's complete with mardigras beads and feathered masks. Needless to say, the remainder of the evening involved plenty of toña and flor de caña.

And now, it's time to get to work.