1st Installation Continued

So We Built a Road:

Going from the first village to the second, we continued to take the gully upward.  At one point, the entire right side of the trail was gone, washed down the side of the mountain.  There was no way for us to pass, and I thought we were just going to have to back down the mountain (which would have been a feat in and of itself).  Instead, an old man who had hitched a ride hopped off the truck, said something to Isaac, and then started picking up large stones and placing them in the trench, which was all that remained of the road.  I looked at Isaac, who shrugged, and then we all started chucking in rocks to fill the void.  The old man had a pickaxe, which he used to pull dirt down on top of the rocks to help fill in the gaps, and in only 20 minutes or so we had reconstructed the road enough that the truck could pass.  We eventually got to the next work site, but there was not enough daylight left to do the installation, and we left.  We ended up in Quilali, a town not far from the Honduran border, and ate dinner from a group of street vendors in the town square.  They were actually a group of families, each with a table and a grill.  The meal consisted of gallo pinto, half a grilled chicken, a salad of shredded cabbage with vinegar and onions, and a heaping pile of platanos fritos—plantain chips.

2nd Installation:

At the second church, Isaac let me install the panel completely solo, which I did a bit beyond his standards.  Apparently I didn’t have to measure and mark things so perfectly before drilling the holes.  He explained that it takes too much time to make things perfect, and that the solar panel doesn’t care whether it’s off an inch or two in any direction.  Battery systems are really very simple.  The panel, the battery, and the lights are all connected to a charge controller.  The panel charges the battery during the day, and then at night, when the lights are in use, the controller regulates the battery release to optimize usable lighting time.  I heard from Douglass that in-grid systems are even easier, because they require no batteries, and if they’re already in-grid, people just use the existing lights.  Sadly, there is a regulation in Nicaragua that makes in-grid systems illegal, bt he says that they’re working on that too.  Interestingly enough, there is no real organized electrical utility.  Here in Managua, I think that the government operates some kind of gas turbine or oil fired power plant that provides pretty reliable power to the city.  Outside the city, the vast majority of the country does not have power, and the other towns that do, usually get it from private providers, who set up small power plants outside the town, and provide power as long as they’re getting paid.

So we installed the system in the church, and left via a different road, which was much easier.  We went back to Esteli for the night.  It was early still and Isaac asked us if we wanted to go grab a beer.  Not one to turn down a cold liquid that is safer to drink than the water I assented.  We stopped at a cantina, and had a few beers (don’t worry, Jim had a Coke Lite).  The beer was “Cervesa Tona (with a ~ over the n), as Isaac said, the most popular beer in Nicaragua.  It was a light lager, similar in taste to Yuengling, but a tad lighter in color and flavor.  Most importantly, it was cold, and after two days in the Nicaraguan sun, drinking warm water, cold was heavenly.  Isaac also ordered himself a bowl of soup.  Smiling rather mischievously he asked if we wanted to try it.  When I asked what exactly it was, he responded with, “huevo de toro” (egg of bull).  Now, I looked at him quizzically, and began to explain that bulls do not in fact lay eggs.  Isaac cut me short, laughing and said, “No no no…HUEVOS”, making a cupping gesture with his hands.  This time I got it: bull testicle soup.  So I tried it, and I’m not going to lie, it was pretty darn tasty.  Needless to say, Jim did not.  More interesting than the beer and the bull testes was the conversation.  After the past five days, Jim and I had gotten pretty good at understanding Isaac, and Isaac has picked up a lot of English as well.  We talked about how Jim and I felt about Nicaragua, and about differences in culture that we had noticed.  We all agreed that in Nicaragua, the culture is one that is much more relaxed and open than in the US.  The people are friendly here, and not afraid of constant social interaction.  Isaac asked what we thought about Barack Obama and the war in Iraq.  He was rather surprised when Jim said that he had not voted for Obama, because he’s a conservative.  Isaac explained that everyone in Nicaragua had been rooting for Obama.  No matter what they think of our politics, the young people here still see the U.S. as a place of opportunity, where anything is possible.  The previous administration was not a very good example of this, and for them, Barack Obama’s election brought that back.  The political divisions in Nicaragua are a bit deeper, due to certain amounts of violence perpetrated by each side against the other.  This seems to cause a number of the older Nicaraguans to be slightly wary of Gringos like us, but in general, the young people see the need for cooperation between the two sides.  Another interesting observation that Jim, Isaac, Emilio, and myself all made was that after a beer or three, my Spanish, and Isaac’s English skills easily doubled.  This even seemed to carry into the next day, and I’m sure that we both came out of it much more proficient in the other’s language.  It was a good night.  *Note* The drinking age in Nicaragua is technically 18, but as people like to say, “Money is the drinking age” if you have money, no one asks questions.

After all of this, we came back to Managua, relaxed at Juan’s for a day, and went to Suni in the morning.