Tanzania

In March I went to Dar es Salaam for a PhD training course on the sustainability of distributed infrastructure. That means we looked at various aspects of small energy, water, and sanitation systems. The course was organized by two different German universities, but there were students from Africa, the USA and other European countries, studying everything from engineering to geography to sociology to architecture. As an undergrad I did a program to bridge engineering and the humanities, but a good chunk of the non-science stuff was a little incomprehensible to me - and even worse for the pure mechanical engineers. I heard some complaints from the human geographers about the technical stuff.

Snack break! The globs tasted like hushpuppies.

Explaining my poster.

The last day of the course we did an exercise where we walked around the city and tried to document some of the infrastructure systems (or lack there of). Street coffee was pretty interesting and quite tasty. Guys walk around carrying a container of coals with a kettle balanced on top and a bucket which contains cups and water for washing.

Mobile coffee solution.

My group found instances of reuse and recycling. This ranged from book binders selling their paper shreds and men chopping up electronics with machetes.

Prices paid for different metals.

The last day involved a trip to a village that was two three five hours from Dar to visit a village where an energy services company was implementing a solar microgrid. Unlike most solar power companies who sell or lease panels to individual households, they install tripods with solar panels and batteries around the village. This allows the system to grow based on the actual (not the expected) demand. People then pay a connection fee and buy chunks of electricity (similar to how you would by pre-paid mobile phone minutes). The generation and load can be monitored in real-time over the cellphone network. The systems don't work with conventional electronics, so the company also retails compatible appliances. After showing us around, one of the founders rode back to Dar with us and was gracious enough to have a conversation about how they operate and a little about their growth strategy. I will probably not use any energy case studies in my dissertation, but it was interesting to think about if any of their approaches could be applied to water, waste, or sanitation infrastructure.

Me in fieldwork-mode (L) and a solar panel tripod with energy box (R).

The direct Dar-Zürich flight leaves quite late at night, so I was able to spend the day with some course-mates at a nearby beach, Kigamboni.

The Dar skyline from the ferry to the beach.

It was a little windy. It was a private-ish beach guarded by masai warriors.

Chipsi mayai - a potato-egg dish with hot sauce. It is eaten with toothpicks, which are not very effective knives.

Get ready for a post dump: accounts of my trips to Haiti and the USA are almost ready to be released.

Bangladesh

I'm in Bangladesh now doing research for my Master's Thesis, which is about the different business models being used to deliver energy services in rural communities (I'm also looking at water a little bit). The food is very tasty and the family that I am staying with couldn't be more helpful or nice.

The girls who  I live with.

Construction next door

So far, I've had mostly long days of field interviews, with a few days in Dhaka for meetings with other stakholders like Grameen Shakti (part of Grameen Bank) and BRAC, both major development players in Bangladesh (and the world).

A very happy (no, really) poultry farmer and his digester.

The collectors and sorters/operators at a MRF/digester. Yes, their shirts are adorned with both the Toronto Maple Leaf' and Armani logos.

View from the 19th floor of the Grameen Bank Building. You can see the national cricket stadium.

Yummy snack with puffed rice, spices, oil, some orange things, and onions.

If you are a brick manufacturer and are not operating in Bangladesh, you are probably missing out. These guys are all over the place. Construction everywhere!

Week Recap: A little Stressful, but super great

Last weekend, the Madrid ultimate team that I play league with took a split squad to a one day tourney in Zaragoza and our squadron went undefeated and won the tourney! Which was nice, but more importantly, we played on grass... such a luxury. Below, you can see me throw the first score of the match (and then some turns) and run really funnily. I've heard that I run strangely before, but seeing it on tape makes me never want to exercise in public again.

This school week was mostly focused on accounting. Our professor thought it would be awesome to give us a quiz on Thursday and the Final on Friday. Who does that? + the subject matter on the quiz wasn't on the test, so preparing for one, didn't really help with the other. Accounting is now over (time to burn the flashcards!) - The prof was perpetually grumpy and rude, but the final was strikingly fair and relativity easy. While getting ready for the assessments, I procrastinated proactively by playing ultimate two evenings and going to see Alela Diane in concert. Aunt Val, if you are reading, I think you'll like her. Here is a taste:

After the Exam we went on a field trip to a historical hydro power facility that also had pumped storage, which was pretty cool. I was mostly interested in the pumping part, but the host talked mostly about how the royals have visited many times and the geopolitical aspect of water (the water that wasn't stored was put into a canal that took it 300 km away). I wrote a horrible term paper once about pumped storage and now I feel like I should apologize to the professor. The pumping pipes:

I'm currently in the middle of a 6 day weekend that will end with a field trip to a concentrated solar facillity between Seville and Cordova. At a Halloween party on Saturday, I went as the solar system (yes, again, but i didn't have any time to come up with something new); however, apparently, in Europe you are actually supposed to go as something scary - the party was me, the Canadian flag and basically everyone else was a zombie. I'll have to tweak my costume for this evening.