On Monday, we had our weekly planning meeting as usual, which
was quite uneventful. Tuesday was a lot more interesting because I went with Walther,
Alvaro, and Greg to arrange a large biodigestor project in the country outside
of the city of Dario. The project is being organized by a Peace Corps volunteer,
Frank. The project is going to fund 14 families to receive subsidized
biodigestors. This way, they only pay $40 of the approximate $150 price.
The project is very interesting. This particular village is
primarily involved in pig production instead of cow production. Everyone has a
half a dozen pigs or more in their back yard. This also makes for some
engineering challenges. Some people did not have a back yard big enough to hold
the hole required for the biodigestor. In the case of one family, they need to
remove a latrine in order to make room. However, it is a type of latrine that
was gifted to nearly all the residents of this village. They are very nice looking,
but no one really uses them since they still have space inside their old latrines.
This is why giving stuff away for free doesn’t really work that well. In the
case of another women, her entire yard is a large concrete pen to house her
dozen pigs. There is nowhere to dig a hole. She was very upset about this,
however, so we are working on a design for an above ground biodigestor
supported by concrete walls.
It was a really long day of talking to families about the
requirements for the project and the specifics about the hole that they needed
to dig before EOS could install their biodigestor. It went quite well though. I
had a great discussion with Walther about the differences in schooling between
the two countries as well as some specifics about the design of the biodigestor
and the stove that goes with it since he is the one who makes the stoves. We
discussed a new design for the stoves in order to improve the efficiency, and
it is going to be implemented in this project.
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| Alvaro talking to a group of beneficiaries about the hole requirements. |
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| Future home of a biodigestor |
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| Pig that will be providing manure for the biodigestor trying to keep cool. |
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