CENCA

FYI: if you click on the blue words, there are links to related articles, pictures, and such. Just making sure everyone gets the full experience.

Well, I hate to make this be my normal reason for writing blog postings, but I have nothing else to do and am waiting for a meeting that supposedly will happen this afternoon. Since last thursday, I have been working at CENCA. They have been around for almost 29 years and have a very solid history of internal development. I am working on the ecological sanitation (ecosan) team. Our main focus is that we are helping to host an international conference on ecosan next November here in Lima. We are also doing various projects with helping people to get ecological toilets. The ones that we do are dry toilets. Inside the toilet there is basically two areas. In the front, is a funnel that diverts urine into a jug and then a hole that allows feces to fall into a bucket. Then a drying agent (we use a dirt/lyme mix). From there, the urine is left for 3-4 months to ferment and lose it's smell (though there are some who add mint to make it smell good0. Then it is a great fertalizer. The dry feces is then put in the compost pile and used as good soil. We have a section at a reserve in the southern part of Lima for research and demonstration of the system. It is cool because that reserve also takes the hand washing water from the neighboring school and diverts it into a constructed wetland for greywater treatment. Then we store it to either be sent back to the school for watering their garden or for watering our garden. The goal is to try and find ways to close the loop.

I am enjoying my time here at CENCA because there are more young people. We went to one of the guys houses last friday night and it is great just hang out. Also, there has been a couple hours of sun every day for the last few days. Not a full day, but I read today that we are looking at highs of 70 instead of 66. So we're picking up a little.

I got to cook dinner for my family on sunday afternoon. Creamy pasta, fried veggies, and garlic butter for bread (the latter was a HUGE hit).

This weekend is a 4 day weekend because tomorrow is a national holiday celebrating the Battle of Angamos during the War of the Pacific with Bolivia against Chile. I'm going to spend the afternoon playing soccer.

One thing I wanted to when I left, was to build a community between me, Peru, and you. How am I doing? What could we do to do better? Let me know. Love you all. Also, getting a camera soon is high on my to do list. I hate not being better at sharing what I see with you.