February 2008 Archives

Greetings SolarAiders,

It's 6am in a very kitsch hotel in Potosi, Bolivia. Everything is purple and bright yellow with statues of Indian elephants and other exotic creatures. We arrived late last night to find our hotel hadn't kept our reservation, so ensued a desperate run around Potosi's hotels with Raul, our counterpart from Fundación Avina, until we found the last two rooms left in the town.

I've been awake since 5am - a mix of left-over jetlag and the effects of altitude. Indeed, altitude has an odd influence on the body. Just brushing my teeth last night left me out of breath, as though I'd just run 10k.

Meeting 80 Leaders
Since our last blog post we had our meeting with the leaders of the communities in Abra Pampa. Eighty turned up from across the region, many of them women dressed in bright traditional clothes - evidence of recent moves to empower women in local decision-making. We presented our work to them and quizzed them about their energy needs and this was followed by a very good discussion. It all works by consensus here; nothing happens unless everyone is happy with it. By the end of it, they were all asking, 'so when do we start?' The agreement is that we'll aim to begin with micro solar and then look into the bigger systems.

Nick

Warme
Raul is a great. His knowledge of the area, where he's lived most of his life, is impressive. He completed his PhD a couple of years ago: he studied an organisation called WARME SAYAJSUNUQO, which means 'persevering women'. Warme was started in the mid-1990s by a woman called Rosario to help all the indigenous communities join together for development. Today, it's a huge success and runs micro-credit banks, handicrafts workshops, three gold mining companies using sustainable mining techniques, an internet café, an entrepreneurs training centre for indigenous people, an eco-tourism project funded by the InterAmerican Development Bank, and a host of other initiatives.

Warme is run by the communities for the communities. Indigenous people in Argentina have been oppressed for centuries and they're just starting to rediscover their identity. Warme is at the heart of a revolution in this area.

Warme covers 12 districts over an area of around 40,000 square kilometres (each district is roughly 3,000-4,000 square kilometers). 100 communities (each of about 40-50 families) live in the area so in all around 25,000 people are part of Warme.

Many villages have limited access to the grid and in any case most families spend much of their time away from the village in the wilderness. They usually have two or three huts scattered in these remote areas, which they stay in when they tend their herds of lamas. These huts have no electricity and so they rely on the usual candles and kerosene lamps, with the usual health and environmental consequences.

Nick

John Keane (our Programmes Manager) and me (Nick Sireau, Director) went on a trip to Argentina and Bolivia recently to visit the proposed project locations and meet Warme, the local NGO there. It was amazing. We'll be feeding through some of our experiences on this blog. Hopefully, they'll inspire you to donate!

Nick

Here's the latest news from your intrepid solar explorers, beamed to you from the frozen highlands of northern Argentina. Indeed yes, it's seriously cold up here at 4,000m. Last night temperatures dropped to -16 degrees, and it's still -4 degrees at 10am in the morning, as I write this email to you from my freezing laptop in our unheated hotel room where I spent the night fully clothed with a hat and scarf beneath eight blankets.

So John and I arrived in Buenos Aires on Sunday lunchtime after 24 hours of travelling. Buenos Aires is a major city - 16 million inhabitants, which is nearly half of Argentina's population - and it feels like Paris or Madrid: big boulevards, big buildings, big shops. It felt kind of odd arriving in mid-winter.

John