Uru and the farmers

Hello Hello!

We've been pretty busy during the days, and at night the internet places close up, so we haven't had a good chance to get a word in. BUT, here we are again.

On Tuesday we went to Uru with Kimario to visit the working stoves. It was pretty amazing to go back and see the people I had worked with in January. I had to leave in January to go back to school, but Duffy and Lauren skipped the first week or so and actually finished everything. So, when I went, this was the first time seeing a few of the stoves completed for me. Along with the digesters, we had two stoves built: one with the biogas burner built in, and one that was just a fuel efficient firewood stove. We paid for a basic one, and if they had a little extra money, they had the option to make it a little bigger. According to Kimario, 4 stoves were working, 4 never were completed/ they ran out of supplies, and 1 that the bag broke. We had given Kimario enough money to finish the 4, and apparently they are just being completed. He said the rain season started and they could not work on them anymore. On Tuesday we only visited the 4 working and 1 non-working digesters. Tomorrow (Friday) we will visit the uncomplete ones, and see if there is anything we can do to help finish them up for the farmers so they can start using them.

From the farmers with working stoves, we received an overwhelmingly positive feedback. Frank, the first farmer we visited, had a pretty elaborate system set up for the effluent of the digester, which is excellent organic fertilizer. He has been testing it out on his tomatoes, and seems to be pretty happy with the project. He dragged me by my hand around his house, lighting the stove for us, bringing us through the corn to show us the tomatoes, and showing us his cattle, etc. I wish the rest of the group from January could have been there, it was pretty great to see. I always feel a little uncomfortable when people thank me, because I feel like what I did was nothing to what I should be doing.

Some problems encountered...
- During the rainy season the gas production decreases. We think this could be for a couple reasons, but most likely because the decrease in temperature slows the reaction of the digester. Other ideas involved the dilution of the mixture due to the crazy rain that comes down and floods the villages.
-SOO-- they still have to collect some firewood.
-The farmers have different amounts of cows, so one farmer who has 4 cows, gets a lot more fuel for his digester than the farmer with 2 cows. So the actual amount of gas produced is pretty variable on the amount of manure added. This is pretty obvious, but it does make data collection a little more difficult.

Mushi, the ward chief, was the first to get a digester. Although when we talked to his wife, who said they used it often, the actual digester looked unused, and the gas bag was a bit deflated. We've been a little frusterated with the discrepencies of what Kimario translates and what we have been observing.

This isn't all bad though because at one house hold they went from collecting firewood 4 hours a day four days a week to four hours a day once every two weeks, even with the decrease in gas. They generally have enough gas to make breakfast, lunch, and a starter sauce for dinner.

More soon!

Nat