A lot of random things have happened in the past few days, but I'm not sure how interested you all are to hear that I had my first encounter with a spider the size of my hand (in my shower, I trapped him and set him free), or the fact that I found out I have a colleague who is named Prince Harry. Prince Harry as first names Rosignol as his last. He's no ginger, although apparently he did start an email last week with "let it be known...."!
I did get up to something quite interesting yesterday though, I went out to the field to see our programs in action. I had been out to an area called Villa Rosa last week, so this wasn't my first visit. On the map in my office, Villa Rosa is described as a 'shantytown', because it has a lot of haphazard settlements built closely together on a very steep slope. Duval, where I went yesterday, couldn't be more different. It's up in the mountains, it takes over an hour to get there. There is miles of space between the houses, although to be fair many of them are still built on very steep slopes. It was a very picturesque drive up though, reminding me at times of Peru or Sri Lanka, and being up in the mountains has the added benefit of being at least 10 degrees cooler than the city.
I was quite interested to go because we saw houses in various stages of construction, so it was easy for me to visualize the building process, and easy for me to see how the technologies we teach help buildings become disaster-resistant. I will probably delve into work stuff more in later posts, so I won't bore you "non-engineers" with it now. (Yes, I am also a non-engineer, and have been referred to as one in a somewhat-endearing way by one of my colleagues).
It was also really neat because they do a lot of agriculture up there, we passed tons of cabbage, lettuce, beets and other veggies. Actually, my colleague brought us some of the Duval lettuce last week, which I had been eating in salads and sandwiches. It was really neat to compare their agriculture to what I've seen in other hilly places though, because they are able to grow things on VERY steep slopes. They do terracing like I saw in Peru, but it's way less formal, they'll just pile a bunch of rocks along the plots, which tumble down now and again and get piled back up when the do. The other funny thing that reminded me of other places I've been was unexpected, because I was reminded of Afghanistan! It seems like a couple of the households have been siphoning off electricity from the main power lines (not that uncommon), but they're not using electrical wiring, they were using barbed wire as their conductor! I love how strong the entrepreneurial spirit is in places like this...
I leave you with another proof of entrepreneurship, an entire furniture showroom fitting into one tap-tap for transport.... enjoy :)
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| A building site in Duval. What a view! |
I was quite interested to go because we saw houses in various stages of construction, so it was easy for me to visualize the building process, and easy for me to see how the technologies we teach help buildings become disaster-resistant. I will probably delve into work stuff more in later posts, so I won't bore you "non-engineers" with it now. (Yes, I am also a non-engineer, and have been referred to as one in a somewhat-endearing way by one of my colleagues).
It was also really neat because they do a lot of agriculture up there, we passed tons of cabbage, lettuce, beets and other veggies. Actually, my colleague brought us some of the Duval lettuce last week, which I had been eating in salads and sandwiches. It was really neat to compare their agriculture to what I've seen in other hilly places though, because they are able to grow things on VERY steep slopes. They do terracing like I saw in Peru, but it's way less formal, they'll just pile a bunch of rocks along the plots, which tumble down now and again and get piled back up when the do. The other funny thing that reminded me of other places I've been was unexpected, because I was reminded of Afghanistan! It seems like a couple of the households have been siphoning off electricity from the main power lines (not that uncommon), but they're not using electrical wiring, they were using barbed wire as their conductor! I love how strong the entrepreneurial spirit is in places like this...
I leave you with another proof of entrepreneurship, an entire furniture showroom fitting into one tap-tap for transport.... enjoy :)
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