My position as Staff in the Science & Technology department in general, and as the manager of sorts of the Appropriate Technology Village (ATV) in specific, is shaping up. And much differently than I imagined. But not in a bad way by any means.
I have been in Kona for 18 days which seems like forever yet totally reasonable that I am still settling into my role and routine here. As far as my schedule and routine goes, I've got that down. I have Leadership Track students from 9am-12pm M,T&Th and I have discipleship students from 3-5pm everyday, leaving me a nice 1-3pm break every day for research, preparation, bible-time, meetings, etc.
At first I felt like I was grappling with task-giving. I definitely entered the Village (ATV) with confidence that what I lacked God would provide for. And He did, every time. Some days I had a couple things in mind and then they'd go into hiding as soon as the students arrived. But there has never been a day when there wasn't more weeding to do or when a student didn't suggest something they saw that could be done. At the start of this week it was still a difficult task, a challenge rather, think up the chores, figure out which were going to happen to day based on so many different factors like weather or time, decide who would do them, answer many questions on How? Where? When?....all whilst I was learning how to do what I was having the students do. But, by the end of the week I had accumulated answers to a lot of my questions, and realized that there would be a constant give-and-go of small increments. I also figured out that it was easier to grab the supplies and/or set up a bit the task at hand--more work was able to be done in the limited time periods and I felt more organized and at peace.
There is more multi-tasking to do that I could ever detail. Twice a day we are measuring the Dissolved Oxygen content in the Ecoponics (growing fish without commercial fish food--in our context and purpose). The tool we have to measure it is picked up in the morning after the Aquaponics (growing food with fish poo and limited water supply) does their morning measurements. We can keep it through the afternoon to use it a second time but it needs to be returned before morning. Watering the plants by one of our several watering options: sprinkler system, drip-irrigation system, or hand-watering with a garden hose...Harvesting Moringa leaves: we want to do about once a week to build a store-house of emergency nutrition. DISCLAIMER: In my update email and first blog post (the realllllly excited one!) I called it molinga...definitely heard that one wrong!
Just this week I had two very capable young men (fully qualified carpenter and electrician) begin to plan and build a gateway complete with trellace and archway. This meant several days of figuring out that the things we required needed more time to collect. So other chores were done on the fly. I have two lovely young ladies also en route to creating and painting new signs for the ATV area. No one on campus knows that ATV stands for. The select few think of quads. They are working well with the manly-men to add it to the gate and archway. I also have a gentleman who is a very quick-to-do kinda guy and I actually have to ask him to wait and come meet with the group to fellowship for a minute before we start--he walks briskly by on his way to pick up where he left off yesterday. I chuckle in appreciation because I could easily have one or more folks who are difficult and unwilling or incapable and I don't have not one! Praise God. So my eager man built me a desk out of pallets! I'll have to post pics of that after I take some...
There is a lot of errands to do...all the time. I walk up and down the slope of a volcano at least 6 times a day. Praise report: I'm getting in shape! My legs and even feet don't hurt as much or often. I also am picking up a tan, a healthy one too! (As in I use sunscreen...most of the time :)
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| The black covering, bottom left, is the underground tank. |
I have a couple big projects that are in some stage of happening. The morning group of advanced students and I will be learning a bit about laying concrete this coming week to be somewhat skilled before we build a bigger version of the bio-gas tank that we have already. The technology here is very handy for any people group that use livestock in a decentralized manner, as in everyone sorta has a couple per household and can do this in an individual way. So here's how it works: you collect the poo from your livestock (we will be using pigs as we already have them on campus) and wash it off into this holding tank--there is a rain-gutter-like trap and pipe that funnels it there. Anaerobic bacteria break the waste down and produce methane, a clean-burning gas. Right now the tank can capture about 8 minutes of cooking time. Our goal is to build a tank that can provide for at least 45 mins of cooking time.
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| Back side of the pig pen & outhouse with drains to the tank. |
There is A LOT to learn about this system, the many many steps to tearing out the old one, prepping the new one etc. Lucky for me I already know what I need to know about caring for the pigs that will be donating their waste. We are waiting for the King of Samoa to email the plans for this to us--this technology is a Samoan tech and this King also happens to be the YWAM base leader for Samoa. No. Big. Deal.
Later in the quarter, or whenever it works out, we may also be working on building solar-driers for drying fruit and different foods. We have ideas/plans on how to build a late 1700's version of a cotton gin and work out how to spin the fibers for thread or some sort of text-tile things. I am also focusing my research efforts on understanding something called Microbial Fuel Cells. Think of the general concept of solar panels and how they collect energy into batteries (for storage), well this idea is using the energies given off in organic happenings (reactions) that take place in soil. There are MILLIONS of critters in there.
That's just a couple things, really. Hah.
Prayer requests: for time management-only to the degree that allows me to make progress toward a couple things I am focusing on, I don't need too much control over time :) That I would find myself making new friends! Though I know a handful of folks from last year, we're all doing our different things and I don't have 55 like-minded photographers around me all the time.
Praises: I am just so grateful for being fully funded for a quite a while!! There are so many generous folks helping the Lord's work in my life its a very secure feeling of love and support. I am continuously finding myself able to do the random things this dynamic "job" calls for. Just the other day I used knowledge from teaching a computer lab section for UC Davis to design a simple database to collect the online sources for research that is accessible around the world to all of the YWAM bases/departments that have Sci & Tech like us. Thanks google tools. Also, another staffer was on the National Champion Agriculture Mechanics Team for FFA in the late 80's. This must be destiny. Though I wasn't a National Champ by any means...
Lots of Love!! Please update me on your life as well, I'm quite out of the loop. Blessings!
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