Highly Distilled 72 Hours

We’ve done a lot in the last 3 days. Imagine if you will a montage of the following:

• Drove to Battambang on Friday, met with Mony’s family in their new house, and stayed at the Classy Hotel.
• Light shopping on Saturday in Battambang with a focus on the sewing machine shop. It’s the best in Northern Cambodia by far. Driving back to Siem Reap.
• Sunday Morning church service at Khnar Tmei and connecting with former students, now young adults. Sunday afternoon meeting with Teuk Sa’at Organization that drills wells and builds latrines. Included a visit to projects in process.

I’ll add individual posts for some of these items and what we accomplished today. It’s a good kind of busy!

The Solar Works!

Yesterday I visited the family that we set up with an off-grid solar solution cobbled together from spare and new parts. I was not convinced the solution would work in the long term but was hopeful that we would at least learn from the experience.

Much to my surprise it works. It’s been working the whole time with no issues. I was amazed. I even planned to spend the entire afternoon finding spare parts and doing repairs. Instead I was left with a sense of wonder that this concept has real potential using local parts.

When I asked the family how they used it, I was struck by how they described a change in their daily routine. They were better able to cook and prepare dinner, they could read at night, and it was generally easier to get things done in the dark. I’m hesitant to utter this phrase but it seems appropriate: Life Changing.

Later in the day I spotted the image below as a worker was doing some tasks in town to an electrical pole. My solution is off grid. Perhaps that’s a very good thing…

Back for the 13th time!

Here we go again!

Trip # 13 will be another adventure into Solar technology. I suspect last year's attempt was a good effort, but I won't be surprised if I find that it was not a lasting solution. This time I purchased a couple of prototypes from Amazon that will help illustrate exactly what type of solution I hope to build with local parts. My goal is to create a parts list and instruction book for local people to light their homes.