UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

It’s amazing to think back on how quickly our time in Sabana Grande, Nicaragua went by. It only took a short plane ride…and a not-so-short bus ride to reach our destination: SABANA GRANDE.     Our bus stopped, all eight of us shuffled to the front, gathered our backpacks, and crossed the Pan-American Highway towards to the Solar restaurant.   Everything seemed so surreal! All of the pictures we had seen, our weekly meetings, the countless emails, had lead us to this point.   As we walked past the outside gates, you could see the Solar ovens we had heard so much about, off to the right was the new Solar classroom, and behind it was the side of the mountain where organic farming techniques were being implemented. It was all there, except this time WE were there too!     We were only an hour ahead of CA but it felt like we were in a completely different world. Life in Sabana Grande was led at a slower, richer pace. Our days started ea...

Friday, September 13, 3:19 PM Maybe I should be a tab bit more serious after my last blog? The past few days have seen marked progress in our project. After our initial escapades at IMAP, we decided we should split up to get more work done in different areas. Irene, Jamel, and Eduardo stayed at IMAP to get a tour of different greywater reuse systems they have built, receive their theoretical information, constructed a practice distribution system for one of the existing banana rings, and tested our lysimeters (devices capable of extracting water from soil at various depths). Soraya, Matt, Ariel, and I left for Chocola so we could take greywater samples from the community. We planned to take the samples Wednesday morning and bring them back to the lake for testing. We took a map of the community that Semillas Para El Futuro (the NGO) had and added locations of houses and nearby rivers. My group split up and had Soraya and Matt take samples to the laboratory of Universidad Del...

Tuesday, September 10, 9:52 AM I write this from the back of a pickup truck taking us from IMAP, a permaculture center by San Lucas to Chocola, a small town where we are going to build pilot greywater reuse systems. Boy what a time we've had the past few days. The word sketchy has come to mean something akin to suspicious in urban vernacular. But I think for our team it's come to mean the adventures of this trip. Where to begin: Guatemala city is the sketchiest place I've laid eyes on. The hostel (graciously provided by University of San Carlos) was fortunate enough to be placed by 6th Avenue, one of the main streets where police actually patrolled and enforced good behavior. Unfortunately for us the closest bakery where we could could eat to avoid demolishing our immune systems with street food was on 7th Avenue. The magnitude of difference in only going one block away from the policed street was mind boggling. Lights were dimmer, men were staring at gringos like vul...

So here is where the fun starts. We arrived back in Guatemala yesterday for the start of a P3 trip (for me, this is my second trip).  We have 3 goals for this trip: 1) To become trained in IMAP's understanding of greywater reuse. 2) To characterize components of the pilot systems including the greywater, the performance, and the clogging rates, and 3) To receive an understanding of the community and its potential interaction with the system. Through Eliska Rejmonkova, professor from UC Davis and our adviser, we connected with a group of chemistry students at the University of San Carlos (USAC) in Guatemala City and they graciously picked us up from the airport and helped us in searching and collecting reagents and other materials. We slept in a hostel provided by USAC and today we are going to continue finishing up our materials shopping and then potentially head over to the Lake Atitlan. Guatemala is just as beautiful as I remember it and we haven't even been to the L...

A lot has happened since the last trip... The UC Davis Engineers Without Borders, Guatemala team (lead, Imaan Taghavi, is a 2013 Blum Center grant recipient) received a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's university competative awards program called "P3", giving the team $15k to complete research on greywater reuse options for rural communities in Guatemala. We are working with an existing technology we call "Banana mulch rings" that has recently been utilized in communities around Lake Atitlan and seeking to optimize results. The term "optimization", means we are picking and choosing various components of the system we would like to make improve. To this extent, we have assigned each of our 7 team members a specialization so they can focus on one specific are for optimization. Our team: Imaan (team leader): Economics, Social Understanding, Water Quality Matt (team leader): Soil, Water Quality Eduardo: Tipping Bucket Jamel...

Even though the weeks have been full of work, we took a Friday off last week and had a goat roasting party at the office. It was a nice way to celebrate the various activities we have accomplished and spend time together outside of the office and field. I was responsible for cooking the pork and I think everyone was surprised that an American girl could actually cook over charcoal successfully. It was a night full of laughter and a really great ending to a busy week. Sutter Allen, undergraduate student, Human Development, UC Davis

Last week, we took 60 Batwa students to a boarding school for three days for a youth empowerment camp. Each day the students attended sessions on leadership, planning, resource management and income generation, health and family planning, and on the importance of education. I was responsible for teaching leadership and a part of the health lectures. Outside of lecture, I spent time with the thirty girls making friendship bracelets, singing songs, dancing, playing netball, and just simply laughing. By the time camp ended, the kids were in tears having to leave but thanked all of the BDP staff for teaching them so much about taking charge of their own lives. I think it was really successful and next time camp could even last a full week. Sutter Allen, undergraduate student, Human Development, UC Davis