A few days in a rural village

I haven't posted all week so this will be a big one about my trip to one of our field projects earlier this week. A day after starting work this past Monday I got to go check out one of our renewable energy centers in the field for a few days - sweet gig!

Autopan

The 2 hour train ride north was a journey in itself, quickly filling up to certain overcapacity, with people jammed in every available crevice and vendors selling food, tobacco, and other products from baskets still managing to squeeze their way through somehow. Jumping on a pan, (like a rickshaw but with a flatbed for people to sit on the back), we motored along a country road to get to the small village of Ullon.

Site 25 years ago vs. today (below)

       

               VSSU main office      

The founder of VSSU started 20 years ago with an amazing vision and lofty ambitions that he has been quite successful in achieving so far, with many development goals still to go. A microfinance institution, library, orphanage, education and community center, and microentrepreneur training institution have all been established. I spent a few nights at the main site that houses the many interns they receive from all over the world. The few kilometer walk from our office to the VSSU building provided me with sites of: mud huts with straw roofs, rice husks drying on mats laid out in the sun, cyclists and school kids, cows, goats, and dogs.

Although it felt way out in the middle of no where, it is wired with electricity and I heard various TV sets playing inside houses as well as spotting a cell tower. India has some of the cheapest mobile rates in the world (like a 2gb smart phone data plan for $2 per month) and excellent network coverage.

Using multimeter to measure panel and battery performance

VSSU also just this month received special consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council which sounds pretty impressive and hopefully will help them continue to grow. Speaking with the founder he mentioned how frustrating the last few years have been, as the government stepped him to prevent him from raising funds from the community which he had been doing to support the various project claiming that only financial institutions are allowed to raise funds.  This seems so counter-intuitive, for a government that can't provide electrification for 2/3 of the population (800 million), shouldn't they be encouraging communities to be self-sustainable, building programs such as this on their own? With populations increasing and resources declining, you wonder how much longer countries like Canada or Sweden can rely on their governments to provide such extensive social programs. I still definitely have liberal views in this regard, but I think more and more communities will have to become more
close-knit and their members start relying on eachother
for these sorts of things.

Small panel setup on the roof for testing

Anyways, so my time there was eventful and informative. I got a sense of their operations and how they're trying to build up a local network with each renewable energy center. They're still a new venture and this center, being the first one established, just celebrated its first year of operation. It was cool to check out their product range and see the testing setup on the roof.
  

                                  

                        Chilling on the roof- playground and orphanage below

 I wandered around snapping shots, with tons of kids getting super excited to see me and running over to ask my name and where I'm from.

School bus

New friends!

plenty of room!

We waited until nightfall to test out a few new lights then after initially getting on a train going in the wrong direction, caught the right one back to Kolkata. Finished reading Shantaram, which is a bohemeth of a novel but incredible - gripping adventure combined with words of wisdom and philosophical thought. Now reading the Dharma Bums. I'll post another update in the next few days on general life in Kolkata so far.

My flickr album is linked on the right side of this page, which has a bunch more photos, or view a slideshow: REC Trip.