Hello everyone! As you know, I’ve just returned from 4 and half week trip to Kenya. Granted, I am slightly late on this blog but I will try to make up for that. I’ll add a little to it each day.—I’ll try to make them short enough so that to not overwhelm you all with my long, drawn out stories, but long enough that it will give you a break/excuse to escape from whatever you are doing.
Some of you know why I am here, some of you may not. If you do, then go ahead and skip to the next page—unless you fall into the “ I just need a reason to stop working for 5 minutes” category I mentioned above—then please read on.
So what am I doing in Kenya? For the past year and a half or so, I have been involved in a club at Penn State called Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW). ESW creates projects to improve the quality of life in developing countries. This may be creating a water treatment system for the community or finding ways to get them electricity—whatever is needed most in the specific area. Most of the projects occur in Central America, so I’m not really sure how this one ended up being in Africa, but here I am! And this project actually isn’t associated with the national chapter of ESW, so… yeah
…
Anyways, the project that I specifically got involved in was designing/building a windmill for a small community about 10km outside of the village Homabay. (a village called Kochia) Homabay is about 300km drive from Nairobi. It’s on the shores of Lake Visctoria—the second largest fresh water body in the world. Electricity via the grid is hard to come by in Kenya, and nearly non-existant once you leave a major city. Where we are building the windmill, the only means of power the community can have is if they walk the 10km to Homabay to get a battery charged. This is where the windmill comes in. The windmill will create enough power to charge about 10 to 20 batteries a week so that the community can get power from there. The batteries are only going to be 12V so it can run a light, a small radio, charge a cell phone etc. Keep in mind that Kenya straddles the equator and does not recognize daylight’s saving---so it’s dark by 630 ALL year. And they no electricity to light their homes.
One of the chief concerns of ESW projects is how to make the project sustainable. If we just came in, put the windmill up, gave out 20 batteries and left, then what would happen if the windmill broke? Who would fix it? Therefore, batteries may be BOUGHT from us at a subsidized price---we decrease the cost by 200 shillings for each day that person helps to build the windmill. (66 shillings is about a $1.00 and a battery is about 3000 shillings.) Then, the person still needs to pay 20 or 30 shillings every time he or she gets they battery charged. This profit will go into a bank account that certain “elected board members” within the community is in charge of. Therefore, the windmill becomes a business. Money is available to fix or improve the windmill. As a check, money is not allowed to be withdrawn from the account without permission from certain staff at the University of Nairobi and Penn State.
So that’s that. I am now (well, was) in Kenya, building a windmill for a little village, Kochia.
Some of you know why I am here, some of you may not. If you do, then go ahead and skip to the next page—unless you fall into the “ I just need a reason to stop working for 5 minutes” category I mentioned above—then please read on.
So what am I doing in Kenya? For the past year and a half or so, I have been involved in a club at Penn State called Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW). ESW creates projects to improve the quality of life in developing countries. This may be creating a water treatment system for the community or finding ways to get them electricity—whatever is needed most in the specific area. Most of the projects occur in Central America, so I’m not really sure how this one ended up being in Africa, but here I am! And this project actually isn’t associated with the national chapter of ESW, so… yeah
…
Anyways, the project that I specifically got involved in was designing/building a windmill for a small community about 10km outside of the village Homabay. (a village called Kochia) Homabay is about 300km drive from Nairobi. It’s on the shores of Lake Visctoria—the second largest fresh water body in the world. Electricity via the grid is hard to come by in Kenya, and nearly non-existant once you leave a major city. Where we are building the windmill, the only means of power the community can have is if they walk the 10km to Homabay to get a battery charged. This is where the windmill comes in. The windmill will create enough power to charge about 10 to 20 batteries a week so that the community can get power from there. The batteries are only going to be 12V so it can run a light, a small radio, charge a cell phone etc. Keep in mind that Kenya straddles the equator and does not recognize daylight’s saving---so it’s dark by 630 ALL year. And they no electricity to light their homes.
One of the chief concerns of ESW projects is how to make the project sustainable. If we just came in, put the windmill up, gave out 20 batteries and left, then what would happen if the windmill broke? Who would fix it? Therefore, batteries may be BOUGHT from us at a subsidized price---we decrease the cost by 200 shillings for each day that person helps to build the windmill. (66 shillings is about a $1.00 and a battery is about 3000 shillings.) Then, the person still needs to pay 20 or 30 shillings every time he or she gets they battery charged. This profit will go into a bank account that certain “elected board members” within the community is in charge of. Therefore, the windmill becomes a business. Money is available to fix or improve the windmill. As a check, money is not allowed to be withdrawn from the account without permission from certain staff at the University of Nairobi and Penn State.
So that’s that. I am now (well, was) in Kenya, building a windmill for a little village, Kochia.
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