Sunday August 31, 2014
Eli and Kayla left on Saturday morning. Their bus left with 1.5hr delay because the it had been stuck in a traffic jam in Nairobi. To make matters worse, their bus had a breakdown that caused an additional 40min delay. Saturday had two dramatic events. First, at around 8am, a woman came running out of her house screaming as if she had been bitten by snake. The screaming was so loud that even Ayesha woke up from it, and everyone around the neighborhood came out of their houses to see what was going on. Later on we understood that the said woman had been beaten by her husband because she was caught in the act of infidelity. A few hours later on the same day, suddenly we hear people crying and wailing and running out of their houses – again – to run to a house further to the end of the peninsula. It turns out a 30+ man (good friend of Symon) had died after being sick for just a few days. He died in the Migori hospital. He was a well-known figure in the community, and was a member of the Kristy Cape Academy board. He is survived by his wife and 3 young kids, all attending the school.
At the kiosk, the personnel was overwhelmed by the demand for cellphone charging. The kiosk ran out of adaptors and this created a waiting list. Today
alone about 20 cellphones were brought in for charging. Symon traveled to Migori with Eli and Kayla, and should comeback with extra (universal and/or octopus) adaptors. Zebedee decided to ask only 10KES for a cell phone charging session, because this is in line with what is being charged by other phone charging station that are connected to the grid. Smaller charging stations powered by a solar lamp or small panel charge 20 KES. That explains the high demand at the Energy Kiosk. It looks like asking 10 KES was a smart move.
Today Daniel worked on the data logger to temporarily log the wind current instead of the battery voltage. We will switch things back before we leave. Daniel was also troubleshooting a logging time issue. Ayesha and Vincent went with Daniel (the translator) to interview families who just started to use the BBOXX about their family life and electricity (similar to what Kristine had been doing in Team 1), but we also wanted to get some feedback about the BBOXX. It was a gratifying experience. The overall impression was that they are happy about the BBOXX and the light bulbs or light tube, but they are eager to use it for more than just lighting. We told them they will soon receive adaptors for cell phone charging, and that inverters and tube lights will be available for purchase at the store in the near future. Also, several of them mentioned that they wish they had one for their market stalls so that keep their business open beyond sunset.
The wind has been blowing with strong breeze for maybe 5 days in a row. It is only this weekend that the turbines stopped only for a couple of times. We can almost always hear the soft and calming zooming noise of the wind turbines. We also observed a curious phenomenon were both wind turbines were perfectly aligned but were pointing in opposite direction, and both spinning. One clockwise, and the other counter clockwise.
Tallies: BBOXX rented out: 16 Number of dead bats near the wind turbines: 4