Day 1

Before I begin explaining the trip itself, I should first explain how we came to be in Managua.  After going through customs in the Managua Airport, we were picked up by Douglas, the operations manager of Suni Solar, and two other employees, whose names I didn't catch.  Douglas speaks English pretty well, and is easy to understand in Spanish, because he enunciates and slows down when talking to "the Gringos".

On the drive to the Suni Solar building he explains to us that we'll mainly be working on installations of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels out in the countryside, but we also will be doing some work with a solar thermal system on a hotel in Managua.  It's a balmy 80 degrees at night with at least 80-90% humidity, you feel like if you tried hard enough, you could drink the air.  The ride to the hotel lasts about 20 minutes, and we get to see a lot of the city.  I'm not exactly sure how to describe Managua.  The city itself is basically an enormous neigborhood, sprawling for miles and miles in all directions.  I'm not exactly sure where the city center is, because the tallest buiding that i have seen is about 4 stories in height, and there's only one.  The rest are all single and two story houses and shops.  At night, it is peaceful, but during the day people, cars, busses, bicycles, and motorbikes fill the streets to capacity.  There are stoplights... but they seem more optional than anything else.  By American standards, one would categorize the quality of dwellings as slums, more of shacks or shelters than houses.  I'll explain more about this in a bit, but for now, back to the story.

Eventually we arrive at Suni Solar, a two story building that is painted light yellow, and sports a large light-up sign with the company name and logo.  Jim and I go inside, and Douglas tells us that the building has wi-fi, so we can use the internet whenever we want (gods be praised!).  After sending a few emails to let people know that we have arrived and are safe, we pack up the laptops, and hop back in the truck to go to our host house.  On the way, Douglas tells us that we're going to be leaving in the morning to go install some panels in the country with two of the Suni technicians.  We ask how long he expects us to be gone and when he says four or five days, we're both rather taken aback.  Things seem to be happening so quickly that my head is spinning, and this is only accented when the ride to our house is literally 50 feet down the street, and around the corner.  

I should note that during this entire time, it is dark outside, because the sun is fully set here by 7 o'clock in the evening.  This only adds to the confusion, because everything is clearer in the light of day.

Douglas stops the truck in front of what seems to me to be just another one of the standard shacks that i've seen along the entire drive.  We hop out, and are greeted at the door by an older man, whose name I later learn is Juan.  He speaks rapidly, in heavily accented spanish, so i can barely understand a word here and there.  Jim is doing a little better, but most of the time we can only get the general idea of what he's saying by his hand gestures.  Our room is a partition of the house, that contains three beds, and is about the size of a Founders room (only it is square, and it seems smaller).  The house itself is built of a steel framework, seemingly assembled at random, with a roof of corrugated tin sheets, and a concrete block floor.  The exterior walls are concrete block, with a heavy front door attached facing the road. 

Note: the internet at Suni Solar is flaky, so I will be posting as much as I can at a time.  The internet recently went out for a few hours, and in that time I wrote 15 pages in my notebook... this will take time to type!