Tale of Two Villages – Part 4

For the second time, Mo Jiang was a wonderful change. I first noticed that the drive up the mountain was quick and smooth - roads had been filled in and flattened since our last visit. The villagers had been hard at work.

 

Our moods lightened immediately. Jokes flowed again, and the way we were received let us be ourselves. It seemed every villager we spoke to trusted that we had their best interests in mind, so discussions never became arguments. At some point on our trip, my guys made me their leader, and the villagers treated me as such. The nights we stayed, Village Leader Zhou gave me his bed and I felt honored.

Tale of Two Villages – Part 3

After returning from my visa run, a week of snow and ice kept us grounded. I busied myself around the office, and prepared for a new project by studying hydrogeology, aquifers, cones of depression, and well physics. By midweek, I was really itching to get back to the two villages.

I organized and led a full day's worth of training for the entire organization, and by the end of it, we had factory workers wanting to make village trips. When the freeze let up, we went down to Yuan Jiang, and I brought along four others – two from the factory so they could put what they learned into practice. Mok was unable come with us, so all the driving fell to me. The trip was full jokes and laughter, and of course some game planning.

Intermission: Thailand, and Getting There

Don't ask me who the guy is

A quick 15-minute break from my Tale of Two Villages. 

There really is nothing like an American passport. Just a simple looking book with U.S.A. stamped on the front, it acts as gate key to most of the planet. Leaving for Thailand was as easy as leaving for the bathroom, and required about as much planning. 

Okay enough italicized text for one post! To Thailand!

Tale of Two Villages – Part 2

continued from Part 1

Following Village Leader Zhou up to his village

After leaving the village in Yuan Jiang, we were spent. To avoid middle-of-the-night driving on terrible mountain roads in a terrible Chinese vehicle, we slept (terribly) in the car.  But I was rejuvenated during the next day’s drive. The temperature became warmer, and banana and mango trees began to appear. We passed countless Hani rice terraces, which are famed in their beauty. The landscape started to become what I had always imagined Thailand to be like. This made sense, being halfway down to Xishuangbanna, which is like a mini-Chinese-Thailand. We paid our respects to a couple smokey Mo Jiang country government officials before taking the country roads up to the village in the hills.

Tale of Two Villages – Part 1

Yuan Jiang, above the clouds

Still playing catch-up, this tale begins a month ago. My heart, mind, and fitness were put to the test as I traveled south to work on two village projects: the first in 邓耳下寨 in Yuan Jiang county (元江), and the second in 密切地村各界组in Mo Jiang county (墨江). I have just returned from the second of two trips - each was about a week in length, and I visited both villages each time. 

Clay Run (And a Sincere Apology)

Three weeks without a post and I’m sure I’ve lost some of you.  It really is bad form for a blogger to write nothing for so long. I sincerely apologize for the hiatus and for leaving you hanging. I must backtrack about a month to catch you up – but what a month it’s been!

A combination of becoming suddenly very busy, passing the holidays, and making a visa run to Thailand had put me into some kind of writing slump. Writing requires digestion. When a person is too distracted to reflect, nothing of value can be written. It’s as if I’ve been eating and eating, but never digesting. Now that I have had some time to digest and write, you can read the crap that comes out!

December's Work, in Pictures

Not the official way to join two pipes... but it does work

Two weeks ago I joined up with Mok and his team. Right away, I was given charge of designing a system to bring springwater up to a village. We also took trips to and stayed at a few other rural villages around Yunnan. For one, we investigated a water resource system needing replacing. At another, we evaluated the results of a past water project, and brought government officials along. Then at two others, we interviewed villagers to see if starting a biogas project would be suitable.

To write about it all that has happened on these trips would require thousands of words. I've been told that pictures are worth about that many, so today I'll use them to tell my story. The following pictures are in chronological order.

The Water Here - Part 3: In the City and In the Air

Water in the City

One Saturday morning, I walked to the edge of the village, flagged down a bus, and was smuggled into the city. I don’t think I have ever been ‘smuggled’ anywhere before. It is a law that every passenger has a seat on the bus in order to pass the city gates; otherwise heavy fines are given to the bus operators. When my fellow workers and I got on the already full bus, instead of refusing paying customers, the driver’s wife pulled out short stools and had us sit, packed in the aisle, all squatting. Our heads only came up to the seated passengers’ shoulders, and in this way we were secretly transported past security and into the city.

The Water Here - Part 2: At the Factory

My first two full weeks here were spent at the Ceramics Water Filter factory, in a small village about half an hour outside of Kunming City. This post describes the water situation there, and what I've learned.

Water at the Factory

 Our tap water comes from a neighboring village higher in elevation, at the foot of Xi Shan, or West Mountain. It is operated manually, so the hours are inconsistent and vary widely. I guess when we have water depends on projected usage, time of year, amount stored at present, and how much the pump operator had to drink the previous night. To mitigate this, we have a unique water system of our own design. 

The Water Here - Part 1: Green Paint

Having been here a few weeks, I can now start to paint you an accurate picture of the water situation... in green!

A Lake of Green Paint

The first encountered, most well known, unavoidable and shocking water feature here is Dianchi, the enormous lake downstream of Kunming City. It struck me as odd when I saw it on Google Maps before coming here, but I dismissed it, thinking it was just poor image processing. No way could the lake be that color. I was right – Google's sky pictures show a dull, hazy green; in reality, it is a vivid, sickly green. Seen from a satellite, neither the thick viscosity nor the odor is communicated. see pictures below