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.
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.
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.
Then it was time to start trainings again. I began in SMOC itself with the same 5 brick stove that I had started to use in Haiti, passed to me by my good friends and mentors, Jon and Flip Anderson. Here we see Noh Noh chopping rice straw that will be mixed with clay to provide the insulation in the brick. Noh Noh has done trainings with me before and he generously provided the clay we needed. It looked good coming out of his rice field, it felt good when being mixed with the straw, but yet again, it proved to be of inferior quality and crumbled when heated to high temperatures. But that wasn't till later.....
In the next picture we see the mud and straw stove performing well - the downfeed working just as intended.
In the next picture we see the mud and straw stove performing well - the downfeed working just as intended.
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