I arrived back in Burma in December, fully hoping to take the first steps in building the Solar Roots Renewable Energy Training Center. But that proved to be difficult due to the local political situation in the Gorka village. The village headman and the Abbot were not seeing things eye to eye. I was advised to put my plans on hold until things cooled down. It was a salutary lesson for me in politics of religion and the lack of tolerance and trust still widespread in this country. We'll see what 2015 brings.
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So I moved back into my old room at St Mathews Orphange Center and started doing trainings.
New Years was spent with the kids who delighted in the Kachin tradition of pounding sticky rice to within an inch of it's life, and then  eating copious quatities of the resulting flattened glutinous stuff.

Lashio

I had made an effort to be in contact with the Metta Development Foundation, which is the largest and most competent of the local NGOs in Myanmar. I had previously met the Director, Sai Sam Kham on a couple of occasions and this year, I was determined to do a joint project with them. We decided on a Stove and PV Training in Lashio, which is the largest town in Northern Shan State, not too far from the border with China.

The training lasted 11 days and was held in the Metta demonstration farm, just outside town. Set in 30 acres of forest and paddy fields, this site was perfect. The participants were from all over Myanmar, from Mytkina in the north to Bogalay in the south – I was honored that people had traveled so far to take my training. These participants were a somewhat specialized group in that they were already employed as community activists and technicians. They indeed proved to be a hard group to impress with my renewable bells and whistles, but by the end, I had won them over and they genuinely thanked me for the new knowledge they had gained.

As always, I myself learned some valuable lessons during the training. This time, I discovered that there are better clays than the one I had used at the two Asia Light trainings, which did not produce really strong bricks. Mr Lum Po, the farm manager kindly showed us where the best clay was to be found. It turned out that at the bottom of the irrigation ditches feeding the paddy fields there was a rich black clay and elsewhere there was a an outcrop of thick brown clay. These proved to be far superior to the clays I had used before. Mr Lum Po also showed us some termite hills and knowing that repairs to brick houses in Madagascar were made with termite clay, famed for it's stickiness and strength, I thought I would try that too.

Mandalay

The beauty of the three-syllable name alone conjures up swaying palm trees, exotic scents in the tropical evening breeze and a Shangri-la sense of peace and tranquility. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Mandalay is a modern, business-minded city, laid out on a strict grid pattern that is usually dusty and insufferably hot and noisy. As they asked George Best, during his decline from youthful soccer hero to drunkard and buffoon, “where did it all go wrong?” The blame lies largely at the feet of Rudyard Kipling, poet laureate of the British Empire, who composed “The Road to Mandalay”, while spending time in Mawlamyine, a languid port in the south of the country. He never actually visited Mandalay, but that didn’t deter him from placing it on a bay, with a British soldier  waxing sentimental about his Burmese girlfriend and the tinkling temple bells. This poem, later put to music, became a very popular song with the British troops in WW2 and indeed, my father used to sing it with gusto. Perhaps in a case of life imitating art, British troops did indeed take the “Road to Mandalay”, when they returned from India to retake the city from the Japanese in 1945, after some fierce fighting. Bizzarly, the British forces included Idi Amin and President Obama’s grandfather!

Mandalay had enjoyed a brief period as the capital of Burma, just before the annexation of Upper Burma by British forces in 1885. Several previous, much more ancient capitals , such as Sagaing and Amarapura are located nearby, but they are now dusty backwaters, eclipsed by Mandalay’s rise as the new commercial center of Upper Burma. Commercial ‘epi-center’ might be more apt as Mandalay is the prime destination for much of the Chinese investment in Burma and distribution center for products from China. From only 5% of the population 10 years ago, Chinese residents of Mandalay are now estimated at 20%. Large multi-story hotel blocks are springing up everywhere, new car showrooms proliferate, all financed by Chinese dollars and even Chinese schools are opening for business. Many Burmese are beginning to feel resentment over the power and domination of their neighbor to the North. To adapt the old Mexican adage, “Poor Burma! So far from God, so close to China!”

More PV Courses

Working with Alin Ein again, I made a visit to their demonstration farm near Mawhbi, about 2 hours north-east of Yangon. They had contracted to have a solar PV system installed by a local company about 6 months ago and it was already having problems. This was a great opportunity for the class to get on their thinking caps and get out their testers. After being gently led through the troubleshooting procedure, the class determined that the battery was badly damaged and would never work again. I replaced the primitive charge controller with a new one from the US, bought a new battery and the system was able to realize its full potential.

The following week I went up to Taungoo, near Nay Pyi Daw, the new capital. There I had a large class of over 20 people, several of whom already had solar systems, but who still had many questions. There were the same explanations to be given  around why a car battery will never work well in a solar system and why discharging a battery down to zero is the worst thing you can do to it. These are hard lessons to accept for people who are totally stretched just to buy that old car battery.

Rangoon
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I was thrilled to arrive back in Rangoon, as I had enjoyed it so much when I was here with Jim last year. I stayed at the same Japanese-run guesthouse, ate at the Nepali restaurant, and patronized Nilar’s yoghurt (by-day) and whisky (by night) shop, (I only go during the day!). Downtown Rangoon is a chaotic mess of overcrowded belching buses, broken sidewalks, dilapidated colonial architecture and foul and delicious odors. Street vendors almost block the sidewalk hawking everything from ancient British-era textbooks to as-yet unreleased Hollywood DVDs. However, the item that fascinates me the most is the small mechanical people counter, you know the one with the button and the revolving numbers? Almost every hawker has one or two and some have several models to choose from. Who is buying these things? How many jobs involve counting to the degree that you need a counter that goes up to 999? How many entry level job starters are there in Rangoon that need to buy a new set of clothes, a little set of stacking stainless steel tins for their lunch and a brand new people counter? I sometimes feel I may go to my grave without cracking this particular enigma.

Downtown Rangoon was laid out by the British during their colonial occupation from 1852 till 1947 and there are still many impressive Victorian buildings gently falling down from their former glory as physical expressions of British imperial will. But it is the people that impress most. At the time of Burmese independence in 1947, Rangoon was largely populated by migrants from India, some involuntary, but many seeking opportunity in a less competitive environment. Most left following Independence or in the purges after 1962.  However, the remaining residents of Indian descent still dominate the street culture of downtown, with their restaurants, street stalls, tea houses, temples and mosques. There is, of course, a Chinatown, and that’s where I go to get my solar panels. Rangoon sits on a bend in the Yangon River, which can handle ocean-going ships and it still has many of the warehouses and go-downs from when Brittania ruled the waves. An odd connection for me is that during the colonial period, commerce in Burma was dominated by Scots.  Steel Bros (Rice), The Bombay-Burmah Trading Corporation (Timber), Burmah Oil and The Irrawaddy Flotilla Company were all in Glaswegian hands. It’s a city of glaring contrasts – if you raise your eyes to take in a gleaming new tower, you risk falling 6ft into an open sewer. As Paul Simon so aptly put it, we live in an era of lasers in the jungle!

​I was invited to give a Rocket Stove workshop at Nu Po Refugee camp a few weeks ago and gladly accepted. It would delay my arrival in Myanmar by two weeks, but the prospect seemed well worth it. In the end I decided to give a solar PV training too and in order to transport all my material there I had to hire a pick up truck and driver for the day. One hundred dollars, but well spent, as I no longer had any restriction on the amount of gear I could bring. In order to get there,  we had to take the famous “Highway of Death” between Mae Sot and Umphang, which was so vividly described in my Fourth Epistle from the Border, see above. This crazy piece of road engineering has 1,200 bends in 160kms! If that were not enough to merit the above-mentioned moniker, during the 60’s to the 80’s there were many deaths from snipers belonging to the Thai Communist Party and local opium growers, two groups who sternly resented the interest the Thai government was taking in their respective affairs. However, those days are long gone and now tourism and the business generated by looking after Burmese refugees are the only games in town.

​My host was a genial Dutchman called Ton, who teaches at an economic development school in the camp and who has dedicated the last 15 years to this work in various camps up and down the border. Hats off to you, Ton!  He is a movie buff too and within a couple of days, the Nu Po Roxie was up and running.  Nu Po is very close to the Myanmar border and is set in beautiful mountain surroundings. Although only established five or six years ago, it has over 15,000 residents and they make up a diverse community indeed. Since it is just opposite Karen state, most of the residents are Karen, but there are also Kachin, Shan, Burman and many moslems. The moslems are the merchants and the teahouse operators.  Curiously, many camp residents did not need to flee for their lives, they came for the free educational opportunities or to try to be resettled in third countries. However, many others have harrowing tales to tell. One of my students had to flee Kachin state when his brother became a ‘person of interest’ because of his political activity. Another, older gentleman , a Burman, clearly had been an intellectual or a functionary of some kind and had to flee five years ago, leaving all behind him. These two were my most enth

​On planning the stove training I decided to make insulative clay bricks for the combustion chambers and use square cooking oil tins as the containers. Luckily, there already existed demonstration videos on Youtube and I was able to project them for the participants to study. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. I wonder what the calculation is for a moving picture? Although I had studied the videos carefully myself, I had never actually built any of these stoves or indeed fired any bricks. In the videos the clay came out of nice neat paper bags, clearly purchased from the neighborhood pottery supply store. I knew that wasn’t going to happen in Nu Po, but I trusted that at least one of the resourceful Karen would have some clay working experience. I was not disappointed. We dug the clay from an existing hole on the school grounds, pounded it into smaller pieces then sifted that through some fine mesh to obtain the clay powder we would need.

For insulative material to mix with the clay we had three available choices, fine hardwood sawdust, rice husks and powdered charcoal. We used all three and experimented with proportions, as the videos were a little vague in that area. We made the brick molds from plywood and lined them with plastic sheets to make removal of the wet bricks easier, (or indeed, even possible!). Our kiln was a 55-gallon oil drum with the lid cut off and our heat source was rice husks.  I had chosen two different bricks shapes, one we called the Africa brick and one we called the Lao brick, after the origin of the videos we were watching. So, after making enough bricks for three Africa stoves and two Lao stoves we loaded up the kiln and held an official lighting ceremony. I was anxious that the husks would keep going out, but once well lit, they burned surprisingly consistently, until they hit the mass of clay bricks. We had packed the bricks too densely and there were not enough husks around them to sustain a burn. But after 48 hours, each brick got at least one side well cooked. The students repacked and another 48 hour firing was started. Unfortunately, I had to leave before the second firing was finished and I am waiting to hear news about the results.

​While the kiln was in action we were not idle, no siree Bob! I explained the function and benefits of Pot Skirts and the participants brought their own pots for custom fittings. 
The older gentleman, mentioned above, took his creation home at lunchtime and came racing back in the afternoon with a pot twice as large, saying that his wife loved it and that she wanted another one for her gas stove. The advantage she saw was that it directed the heat away from her face.

For the next four days I gave an introductory training in Solar PV. After much classwork and occasional sleepiness, we would emerge into the bright sunlight to demonstrate and test what we had learned with my show-and-tell bag of solar cells, fans and lights. The basic electric concepts of voltage, current, resistance, energy and power are difficult to master for most westerners and doubly so for those who are meeting them for the first time. However, without a decent grasp of these terms, no-one can design or troubleshoot a PV system. ​

​We also visited three existing PV systems in the camp, which was extremely instructive, as all three suffered from one maladie or another. The batteries in the  large system at the camp administrative office had been allowed to boil off most their acid and thus were ruined.  The man charged with looking after the system, affectionately nicknamed Mr Cowboy, was not there when it was installed and had never received any maintenance training. What had been a good powerful system, now could only power two lights for 30 minutes before shutting down. Next we visited a private home where there was a panel and two batteries, but no charge controller. Normally, this is a no-no, but having two batteries ensured that there were never enough hours in the day to overcharge them. I recommended that the two batteries be joined together in parallel to equally charge them both. An amusing incident, (for everyone except the victim), happened at this house. Upstairs we met the family, including a chubby infant, and after reviewing the solar system, we descended to the ground floor to partake of some instant coffee. After a few minutes one participant started patting his head with a questioning look on his face as he surveyed the ceiling for the source of the droplets raining down on him.  This merely illustrates the ancient Karen proverb that goes “People who live in bamboo houses must always be ready for the occasional golden shower”. The last site visit was a shop where the panel was facing almost due North, and of course, contributing very little to the health and welfare of the batteries. We sorted that out and soon were on our way home, having learned much and help a little bit too.

​At the risk of boring the non-battery afficiandos in the audience, I would like to explain about how many of the camp residents get their electricity. There are several small hydro turbines and motor generators that put out occasionally wildly erratic voltages. These are used to charge old car batteries that are then connected to Burmese made-inverters to deliver a loose approximation of 220V for TVs and lights. The short life and poor performance of these batteries are due to several perfect-storm circumstances that not even the most valiant electro-chemical device could withstand. Here’s the sad tale: the batteries are only pressed into domestic service after they will no longer start cars, if they get water, it will be muddy stream water or rainwater, (rarely the mandatory distilled water), they will be discharged to within an inch of their lives on a daily basis and recharged by people who have only the vaguest idea about battery maintenance and no financial incentive to learn more. Oh, and did I mention that car batteries will inevitably have a short and unhappy life if used in deep cycle applications?  I had hopes of being able to improve the situation, but when one man asked me why he should take his battery back to the recharger before every last watthour had been squeezed out of it, I couldn’t come up  with a reason that made financial sense to him. Why take your pail to the dairy with some milk still in it? They’ll only charge you for your own milk! My entreaties about long term investments fell on deaf ears, as well they might for people who are grateful to still be alive and out of prison. ‘Nuff said about batteries.

​As the bricks gently cooked, we also installed a new solar system on the library building. I had intended to just purchase a small 12V system, as much for a teaching aid as anything else. But my purchase choices were limited and we ended up with a slightly larger 24V system, that will actually supply much of the electricity needed, much of the year. After 3 days of lectures and demonstrations, the students were ready for some hands-on work. Either I’m getting much better at this, or these participants were really bright, (a combination of the two I’m guessing), but the install went very smoothly with only discreet oversight and the occasional suggestion from myself.

With only two days left, the bricks were still not baked, so I started a new rocket stove design featuring a sheet metal combustion chamber. This was done to illustrate the use of another material and the example built by our Kachin participant was an object of beauty. This galvanized metal will only last a month or two, but I did bring some thicker stainless steel that they can use for the r​eal thing later on.

​So ended a very successful and satisfying two weeks. All the participants were extremely grateful for the knowledge and skills imparted, including the megabytes of pdf documents on every subject from gasifiers to greenhouses. Solar Roots left behind a nascent collection of tools for stove building including an angle grinder and cordless drill and I hope some positive feelings about technology transfer and East-West cooperation.

​To my eye, perhaps the most stylish expression is to be found in the variety of head gear available. Many straw hats are sold, but not Panamas; they are more like the pork pie hats made famous by Lester Young and Dizzy Gillespie, with a beautiful line of pink woven through them. Of course they are worn at a jaunty angle, sometimes pulled down to shade the eyes. Women often wear straw hats with a bowl crown, a large brim with a tattered edge and the resulting dappled sunlight on the face is quite, quite alluring. The French influence is evident in the proliferation of berets and caps worn by city men. In fact, this year after visiting Laos, Vietnam and Madagascar, all ex-French colonies, I conclude that the main cultural legacy left by these gaullic invaders comprises of berets, baguettes, and petanque!

But then came the big trip that showed me the real Laos. It was to the north-eastern province of Xieng Khuan, around the area they call the “Plain of Jars”. Due to my presence, LIRE had been hired by a Swiss NGO to troubleshoot a solar water pumping system and to test some new stoves in remote Hmong villages in the highlands. Chanthapaseuth, my sturdy assistant, and I took the overnight bus to Phonesavanne, the regional capital. It’s at about 3,400 ft in elevation and a cool welcome change from the sticky heat of Vientiane. In fact, I was warned that temperatures in April might reach 110 degrees F in Vientiane, so I only brought T-shirts. Oh, the folly, Bruce! This year, nighttime temperatures sometimes plummeted to below 50 degrees and I had to buy a heavy sweater and two extra blankets to survive. But the next night it would be so hot that even a cotton sheet was too much. I blame the oil companies and global warming, I don’t know about you.
Part of our duties up there was to do tests on some Vietnamese-designed fixed cook stoves. These were made of local building bricks with a cement top, pretty massive fellows! We conducted the Water Boiling Test on three of these stoves and one traditional, 3-legged stove for comparison.  The massive stoves performed quite well, though it was a very small sample that we tested and the conditions were somewhat less than scientific.
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​I flew into Bangkok in mid-January, planning to take care of some dental work, buy some tools and be on my way to Sangklaburi in a week or ten days. Well, things took longer than I expected – the dental work was difficult, they didn’t have the new microscope necessary to safely do the root canal and I could only see the dentist on Sunday afternoons! It was great to get back to Sangkla and the house I share with Naam, – all my tools,  books and clothes were still there, if a little rusty, musty and foosty after  a 4-month rainy season, where everything starts moldering down and returning to its constituent elements. My friends were all still here and my favorite restaurants were still open – who could ask for anything more?  In fact though, Sangkla has changed quite a bit in the last year. It is now becoming a resort town for week-enders from Bangkok and has even had a write-up in the Lonely Planet, surely the kiss of death for a remote, lake-side village, tucked away in the hills leading to Burma.

​I flew into Bangkok in mid-January, planning to take care of some dental work, buy some tools and be on my way to Sangklaburi in a week or ten days. Well, things took longer than I expected – the dental work was difficult, they didn’t have the new microscope necessary to safely do the root canal and I could only see the dentist on Sunday afternoons! It was great to get back to Sangkla and the house I share with Naam, – all my tools,  books and clothes were still there, if a little rusty, musty and foosty after  a 4-month rainy season, where everything starts moldering down and returning to its constituent elements. My friends were all still here and my favorite restaurants were still open – who could ask for anything more?  In fact though, Sangkla has changed quite a bit in the last year. It is now becoming a resort town for week-enders from Bangkok and has even had a write-up in the Lonely Planet, surely the kiss of death for a remote, lake-side village, tucked away in the hills leading to Burma.

​I hauled the welder and other tools from Bangkok to Sangkla by bus, a feat in itself! But imagine my chagrin and mounting frustration when I plugged in the welder and found it didn’t work. I asked NawPawLulu’s son-in-law, Eff, to help me out. He is a skilled welder and generally, a very handy guy, so I knew he would find the problem. Well, it turned out that a key wire had been left disconnected, inside the welder. I know nothing about welding, (other than it’s potentially dangerous), and I have thus been studying instructional videos on YouTube. The emphasis is on safety and proper attire. So, when I go to weld, I wear a long-sleeved jacket, a leather apron, the best shoes available, dark goggles, welding gloves etc, as per the instructions. So now, Eff goes to test the unit and weld a rocket elbow I had  already prepared – he’s wearing shorts, flip-flops and a muscle shirt!  He did accept my offer of dark goggles, though. Of course, he did a great job and didn’t burn himself. However, after a second day spent with Eff, I noticed that the top of one of his middle fingers was missing.........I think I'll stick with the sweaty protective clothing. My first welding attempts were very poor and very ugly. Now I’m getting the feel for it, although it may be some time till we open the Acme School of Welding (Asia).

​When I was searching for appropriate cooking pots, I went to Little India, which is a small enclave of people from the sub-continent, relocated inside Chinatown, Bangkok. I asked a young man to help and discovered he was from Nepal, of all places. Everyone he asked about my pots spoke Nepalese. It was quite dis-orienting. Then I met Citar, an employee of Children of the Forest. She is Nepalese too. Apparently, many Nepalese soldiers, (Gurkhas), were brought to this area to fight for the British against the Japanese during World War Two. I knew about the Nepal-Burma connection before, but it was a new twist to meet people who had settled in Thailand. South East Asia is a very ethnically mixed region indeed. I am looking forward to my visit to Laos in March and April, where there are many, many different ethnic groups.

​Well, my period in Sangklaburi is now finished and I’m off to Laos tomorrow night. Although things took longer than I expected, I feel I have achieved quite a lot. In the month that I actually spent in the workshop I build 6 stoves; an Acme 11, two Acme 38s, two Acme 64s and one big Mama Acme 200. (The numbers come from the capacity in liters of the barrel that houses the stove). I purchased and distributed about a dozen pots, complete with custom pot skirts. I trained two people in the basics of rocket stove theory and stove building. Lastly, I printed and distributed five training manuals on building rocket stoves. The stoves worked excellently and were received enthusiastically by their recipients. Now I’m looking forward to getting feedback about performance and ease of use, so I can make improvements in the future. The workshop is  all packed away now, but it can be set up again easily and Acme Stove Works (Asia) can go back into production next year. An exciting final note: there is every chance that I will spend the month of May in Burma, meeting with groups who want to learn more about renewable energy. My friend, Jim Connor, has just returned from Burma where he found a nascent green movement that is thirsting for the gospel of photovoltaics and improved cook stoves. Their long wait is almost over.