Cape Town

I just got back from a very needed vacation to Cape Town. Mel and I took a taxi to Bloemfontein, rented a little red Kia Picanto at the airport and started the 1000km (620 mile) drive southwest towards Cape Town. We didn't make it very far (downtown Bloemfontein) before finding a McDonald's to pick up some McNuggets, fries and fountain soda. It tasted like America.


We left Bloemfontein at around 10:40 am and got to the hostel in Cape Town at around 10pm. It was a very long drive, but it ended up being very handy to have a car with us in Cape Town and the price was about the same as flying or taking the bus. Our first full day in Cape Town we went up to Table Mountain. It was so windy that they weren't running the tram to the top, but we found this tree and bench, which was a great alternative.


After Table Mountain we decided to spend some more time in the care and drove down to Simonstown to see the penguins. Before we got to the penguins we stopped and had some fish and salads near the marina and found these cool little boats moored there.

After lunch it was off to find the penguins, which were not difficult to find. They were adorable if not terrible active. We did see one penguin that had somehow climbed up on a rock in the middle of the bay that must have been 2 meters out of the water at it's lowest point. We named him King Penguin because he kept waddling around to different sides of the rock to survey his territory.

The penguins were only entertaining for so long, and because we were so close, we decided to head down and check out the Cape of Good Hope. Along the way a troop of baboons crossed the road and Mel caught a good picture of this big boy. That thing around his neck is a tracking device of some sort I think. There were a couple guys with "Baboon Monitoring Team" on their vests who were just watching the troop take over the road.

The land around the cape is pretty barren, which is understandable considering the gale force winds that were pummeling everything over a foot tall. We made it out to the cape regardless and got the necessary photo documentation.

We both somehow forgot our cameras when we went out to wine country, but be assured that it was gorgeous and the three wineries visited all proved to have deliciously smooth wine. I'd go back.
We didn't have a very packed schedule, so we took a few walks along the beach and ran into a teatertotter, which Mel had never been on before. It was thoroughly amusing as you can see below.

This last photo is from the V&A Waterfront and that big red guy is made out of Coke crates. In the background there is Table Mountain.


Overall the vacation was terrific. We ate huge amounts of delicious food, walked on sidewalks, drove ourselves around (Mel learned how to drive a manual transmission), went outside at night and found some delicious wines. Work starts again for me on Monday, and it's going to be busy, so this might be the last post for a while. Much love all.

Mounting the Panels

I just started a two week leave from MCA (it will be a good break before a very busy 5 months), and so I took the opportunity on Sunday to head back up to Ha Sefako to install the solar panels. Thursday and Friday I had missed work with a nasty virus that left me with cold sweats and a 103 degree temperature, it later moved to my small intestine, and on Saturday it had made it's way into my lungs. So, traveling up to Sefako on public transportation Sunday was not a pleasant prospect, but it was kind of a now or never moment. Long story short it took me roughly 8 hours, 2 hitches and 2 taxis to get to Sefako. I arrived at about 4 pm and immediately got a small crew together to get to work. We prepped the panels, bolted the first two in place and ran some conduit before it got to dark and cold to work anymore. The picture below was my attempt at a night shot of the office with lights on. I wanted a little more, but without a tripod and my good camera, there wasn't much I could do. Although it's not pretty, it tells the right story.


The next morning I asked the boys to be there at 8 because I wanted to make it back to Maseru the same day. They showed up a little late, so I took some pictures of what we had accomplished. Below is the concrete for one of the long support struts off the back of the contraption. I was very happy when I showed up and saw how stiff the structure had become with the supports placed firmly in concrete a meter deep. It's certainly not going anywhere.


This next picture is just of the first two panels that we installed the night I arrived. I was happy working at night because it meant that we weren't going to get shocked wiring up those panels...


When the boys did arrive, we started work right away. We quickly had the next two panels in place and I wanted to make sure we had some documentation of the installation. I handed down my camera to one of the boys who was helping and asked, "Have you ever used a camera before."
"No, Sir."
"Okay, push the little button on top to turn it on." There are only two buttons on top, so he pushed both and the lens came open, which gave him a little start.
"Now push the round button down halfway, and it will beep and you will see some green boxes. Then push it all the way down and it will take the picture." After about 4 minutes of this, not knowing if he had actually taken any in-focus pictures, I told him good job and got back to work. In the end he had nailed it and had taken about 15 pictures, one of which is below.


While we were working a small crowd formed, loitered, gossiped and occasionally helped (see below). It took them about 20 minutes to disassemble and move the scaffolding because there was a big weekend to catch up on, but they seemed pretty interested and proud of the solar installation.

The scaffolding we were using wasn't exactly in pristine condition. It was bent all over the place, had no treads, had not levelers and generally shook. In some cases we even had to stand on the top rung to reach where we needed to. It was precarious, definitely not OSHA approved, but also the only way we could get the job done. Here Tlobello is standing in a very uncomfortable position putting in a hard-to-reach bolt. I couldn't have done this job without him, he is a serious handyman.

This is just me doing some wiring. The wind picked up towards the end of the installation, and despite the flimsy scaffolding the reinforced structure was rock solid.


The very last bolt that needed to be installed was very difficult to reach, so I got down and recruited the tall kid in the group to go do it. He hopped up, and with Tlobello's help, they locked everything up.

This is the crew from up high. Unfortunately only older kids were attending winter classes that day, so I didn't get a chance to see students that I'd had.


Above is the finished installation. The office building blocks the view from the front, but this does a good job of showing the 810 watt array.

Below you can just see the array against the school. It's big, but out of way behind the staff room and office.


So that project is all done. The two top pieces for the battery encasement were curing while I was there, but they should be installed by the end of the week, and there are a few pieces of conduit that need to be installed, but it looks great and is all ready for use. We'll have to wait to hear how it's working later in the year.

Cheers, all.

Solar Power Trip

Work lately has consisted primarily of reading and writing reports, so writing after work has not been an option. But, my sister sent me a note that basically said that she knew that I wouldn’t send a card or even call, but that if I wrote a new blog post (with pictures), then she would forgive me. So, here it is.
The infrastructure program that MCA-L is working on here includes the 250 rural water supply and sanitation projects as well as 138 health center refurbishments. They’re spread all over the country and their locations are often hard to discern on Google Earth, so we bought 1:50,000 scale maps for the whole country. There are roughly 60 of them. When they were delivered they came in two rolls of 30 maps each and were just plopped on my desk. That was an unusable way to keep the maps, so I decided to make a map holder.

A quick trip to the hardware store yielded some 2x2 and 50 dowel rods. Mel was in town doing some work on the Peace Corps’ Volunteer Resource Center, so she came over and helped me build the thing. She liked woodworking more than the metalworking that was required for the solar panel mount we built for her.

The final product turned out pretty well. It’s full of maps in my office now and I got an “I’m impressed” comment from the CEO.

16 months after we originally turned in the proposal for the Ambassador’s Self-Help Grant, all of the equipment finally arrived at the school. The final system consists of 6, 135 Watt solar panels (total of 810 Watts for the array), 8 100 Amp-hour deep cycle marine batteries, a 2000 Watt pure sine wave inverter and a 30 Amp solar charge controller. I went up last Thursday to help install the system.

I arrived at about 2:30 pm and immediately started unboxing everything. It was awesome. The wiring for the staff room, office and library had been completed in January, so I was able to put up the control box (the regulator and two breakers).

About half an hour after sun down we were able to use the light switch on the wall to turn on the lights in the office. It was a very exciting night.

The next day some local builders came to install an enclosure for the batteries. When the batteries charge they let off some pretty nasty fumes, they are also about $140 each, so the enclosure will provide some additional burglar proofing.


The builders did a great job. They were going to come back the following Monday to set up forms and pour two steel reinforced, high strength concrete lids for the enclosure. In the picture below you can see the holes that we drilled for the fumes to escape. The wires running from the battery pack to the inverter (the big blue box that converts the batteries’ Direct Current to 220 Volt, 50 Hertz Alternating Current) are 00 gauge, which means they’re about as big around as your thumb. It’s some beefy stuff.


The solar panels we got are some high-quality Kyocera panels. They’re 1.5 x .7 m, which makes the total array 1.5 x 4.2 m. It’s big. With the battery pack all wired up and working, I headed out to the library to look at all the books that were just sent through the African Library Project (thanks everybody for your hard work, especially Ma). With the additional 1000 books that arrived recently, there are now roughly 2200 books in the library, which is now powered. It was very satisfying to see the lights shining on all those books.


With the wiring completed, it was time to move our attention towards the panel mount structure. The company who provided all of the equipment also built us a custom mount for the panels. Its 3 meter height did not meet the safety requirements of the principal, so he had an additional 3 meters of big square tubing welded onto the bottom of the main posts. Installation of 6 meter poles is much different than 3 meter poles.
To start with we had to try to point the array appropriately to maximize the amount of time the sun was shining on it. Unfortunately the compass I brought had been messed up and was facing almost directly East. We averaged everybody’s guess of North and then adjusted it based on the sun’s path. I think we nailed it.


The next task was to dig the main holes. The depth of the hole went from 1 meter for the 3 meter poles to 2 meters for the extensions. Luckily the soil was fairly easy to dig in, but the length of the spades the school has is only 1 meter. It required the bys from the school to crawl down into the holes to remove the dirt loosened by throwing the shovels down into the hole. I don’t think we got fully two meters down, but we got close.


Next we had to raise the poles into place. It was a fairly dangerous exercise, but we had a lot of hands on the structure and the support poles (that were originally supposed to be placed in concrete in the ground, but which now hung uselessly 1 meter from the ground) provided some additional leverage to raise and steady the big piece of metal.
To brace the beast while concrete dried, some poles were found and both sides were pulled down so that they were in compression, then fastened together at the top with some boards to create a sort of A-frame structure. It worked well enough, as the panel mount stayed upright until the concrete cured.


The added height of the structure made it very wobbly. Pushing on it modestly sent it into tuning-fork mode and it vibrated steadily for a couple minutes. In order to stiffen the structure up and make sure that it didn’t fall over in the wind, the principal went to town and came back with some 6 meter lengths of beefy angle iron.

Some more holes were drilled (Nate, the new volunteer at Sefako High was getting some of his first metalworking experience) and the support pieces aligned with the rest of the structure. The principal decided the task of mixing and pouring the concrete should be left to the students. So, we are left only with the mounting of the solar panels. It’s going to be a tricky task at the new height of the panel mount structure, but we were able to borrow some scaffolding, which should make the activity possible. I’ll be heading back up in a week or so to finish installation of the panels and some razor wire around the structure to give the panels more security. When it’s all done the system will provide the school with clean, reliable, nearly maintenance-free electricity to power their printer, lights, 2 laptops and hopefully a couple desktop computers in the library. It’s a great improvement to the school and will hopefully allow it to attract teachers who would otherwise shun the school due to its remoteness and lack of amenities.

While I was in Sefako I stayed at Mike’s house. It was a bit strange to be back in Sefako and not have lights or power. It was quiet and dark by 5:30, which left a terrible South African pop station and a book as my only diversions. I was in bed by 7:30 every night.


We finished up the solar stuff pretty late on Sunday afternoon. While I was waiting around for the taxi I took some pictures of boys playing soccer in front of the shop. It’s a much different looking place in mid-winter with the brown hills all around. There are parts of the mountains that flash red at sunset though, as the sun dips behind the hill and some of the grasses show off their more muted hues.


The taxi finally came at 4, which would have put me in town around 6:15 or so. I wasn’t excited about it, but I figured I could probably make it back to Maseru. 35 minutes later the taxi stopped and said that they weren’t going to town, there weren’t enough people on the taxi. So we waited for a taxi to pass by going the other way and they put me on that. So I returned to Sefako a little after 5, only to get back on a taxi the next morning at 6:30. Oh how I miss rural living…