From the Road – Page 44

Update from Morokoshi, Kenya

On 2009-09-12 Steve Muriithi, Morokoshi founder wrote:

How is you[?] … thank you for your education, we open the school on 8-9-2009 and everyone the children and teachers are doing well the women continue to tender the green house and i filled the tank with water from water line. So they are able to to irrigate [their] plant without any problem; they also did plant in of new plant at the other shamba in wanyororo.

We have not had good rain though we still have not lost hope. The feeding progrmme is still on … im still trying all i can to feed this kids with my the money from juice bar. im now milking my second cow and this have really help suplement the feeding progrmme. As you know the economy back bone of this country is agricuture so … now we are poor more than before. but im sure we will make it, we will tighten [our] belt … the children are doing great and continue to put a hard smile … that how life can be sometime, but never last way forever. say jambo to everybody and you family.

2009-09-28 06:08 Steve Muriithi, Morokoshi founder wrote:

… the green house is doing very well and the tomatotes are so big ;i wish you were here to see. the rain have come but we need more tanks and im planing to build washroom and use the water from the tanks to keep the toilets clean. say high to Criss and we really miss him. the feeding prgrmme is still going on and i continue giving this children poridge. they need it more than before as you know that the drought have really hit us. bye for now Kai. i miss you man.

On 2009-10-02 Steve Muriithi, Morokoshi founder wrote:

It so good to note that the visitors and the volonteers are appreciating our work and our plan. This is very encoraging and especially to big heart like Grace. I know we can achieve more in future and we shall make morokoshi to be the best in this community. any way and im happy for you guys and we shall do more. Say a big jambo to Chris and Grace

By Kai Staats|2009-10-09T11:19:42-04:00October 9th, 2009|2009, Out of Africa|0 Comments

Footsteps in the Wind
Just a few nights ago, I slept beneath the shelter of a tent in the Stanage National Forest, near Hathersage, England, and awoke to the sound of a light rain and the wind whipping the camping permit against the stretched nylon with a nearly steady rhythm, footsteps echoing down long, narrow corridors.

I held to the image and poetic composition of my dream: an old, tall, thin man, arms waving, running without apparent destination, overwhelmed by the obvious, pending doom. He wore a tattered black top hat, a long, black tail coat split at the bottom and pointed, broken shoes. His bare, white ankles shown just below the limit of his dusty trouser legs, the cuffs of his once-white shirt longer than the coat. He was bent over as he moved, compensation for his unusual height more than for pain in his back or defect in his bones.

He was, in the Hollywood tradition of pre-industrial revolution London, wide-eyed and mad, going on about things which the mass of equally ragged individuals around him generally ignored.

In this dream, I was a child who could not ignore such a man, even crazy as he was, for what he said hurt deep within me. The concept that there could be nothing new was too much to bare without challenge.

And so the exchange unfolds …

There is nothing new under the sun!

“There is nothing new under the sun!”
I once heard a man cry.
I looked across the crowd,
called to him and asked “Why?”

He stopped, considered,
and then came to my side.
“Innovation, invention, and creativity cost.
It’s an accepted principal that new ideas are lost.”

“We just recycle what is here,
to use again and again.
Something truly new?
Well, that would not be what has been.”

And with a touch of his hat,
and a brief, shameful grin,
he shook my hand
and then bounded down the street again.

“There is nothing new under the sun!
… nothing new under the sun!
… under the sun!”
his voice fading into the clamor and din.

I was moved, yes,
but impressed I was not.
The answer was clear to me,
for the sun is indeed quite hot.

But to live without risk,
that’s not living at all.
To avoid the light of the sun,
is to avoid the call.

And so I ran in the opposite direction,
with a confident, wide grin, yelling,

“Over the sun we shall go!
Over the sun we should seek,
for there the ideas are new,
and the innovations replete.”

In the summer of 2010, this poem was put to music by singer/song-writer James Hersch and enjoyed via the embedded audio player, here:

By Kai Staats|2018-09-08T16:42:19-04:00October 7th, 2009|Dreams|0 Comments

1912-2009: From Fuel-stove to Grid-tied

This is a summary of more than ten years’ remodeling of my home in historic, Old Town Loveland, Colorado. Other stories about the work on my house include Shot in the Back and Fiddler Through the Roof. Earlier photos are forthcoming …

Do we really have to buy it?
In the fall of 1998 my parents drove up to Colorado from Phoenix, Arizona to co-sign on my house. At that time, I had never carried a credit card nor debt of any sort and therefore had no credit history. I was proud of this fact but the loan officer was just shaking his head, tapping the computer monitor screen as though the lack of data were incorrect, impossible.

My parents arrived just hours before the signing. My mother stepped from the car to the sidewalk where my then girlfriend Janet (owner of the famous Yellow Dog “Potter”) and I greeted them. My mother stopped, looked at the house, at my father, and then to me. My stomach did one of those implosions as though someone invisible punched me. I had hoped for “You did well. Good choice,” or at least, “Well, it’ll take some work, but it will be a jewel in no time.” Rather, with tears in her eyes, her lips quivering as she fought back the words, “Do, do you really have to buy it? Maybe there is another one?

[pause, looking around] Did you look in the rest of the neighborhood?” This, coming from a seasoned home remodeler was really not good. It was that bad, the worst house in the best, Old Town neighborhood.

A Tract Home of the 1900s
Built in 1913 for the sugar mill employees of Loveland, my home, like many of that day, was nothing more than a tract home. It is likely someone said of that neighborhood then what we say now, “Oh! Isn’t is just horrible! They all look exactly the same. They just, well, they just cut them out like cookies but paint them different colors. I hope they plant some trees.”

Nearly one hundred years later, the house has received two additions (once by a previous owner, as is evident in the attic by a second roof-line, and again by me). Now one must literally walk inside the houses of this area to recognize the similarities in the original floor plans.

Within 48 hours of signing, Janet, my parents, and I filled a 40 cubic yard, roll-away dumpster with the things we removed, including a make-shift closet (keep in mind that closets were not an integral part of home design at this time), kitchen cabinets and counters, and cat-piss soaked, Brady Bunch orange carpet and particle board underlayment. Disgusting.

7 Years Not at Home
The seven years that followed saw steady, but relatively slow progress as Colorado is conducive to outdoor activities nearly every weekend of the year. Given a choice, for those weeks I was not traveling for Terra Soft or for adventure, I would nine times out of ten choose rock climbing over scraping, rewiring, painting, or plumbing.

Nonetheless, I filled a 40 cubic yard dumpster two more times, and a smaller version at least two times with the rubble of demolition and remodel. It has been a labor of love and hate as nothing can be more rewarding and completely debilitating than completely rebuilding an old house, inside and out.

I have not by any means moved to restore this home to an historic condition, rather, I have worked to improve its function while reducing its energy footprint (long before “carbon offsets” was in the vernacular). Each project had at some level an intent to improve the insulation and thermal properties of this otherwise black hole of residential energy consumption.

Now, in the summer of 2009, I do contend that my home is one of the most energy efficient in the neighborhood, especially for its age and humble beginning.

From “Sow’s Ear” …
Allow me to take you through the projects, from beginning to present day. I will start with a description of the house, as it was when I acquired it in the fall of 1998:

• Original single-pane wood frame windows, most of which neither opened nor closed from whatever position they occupied. Enormous air gaps one could feel if seated on the opposite side of the room.

• No insulation in the plaster-lath / pine ship-lap walls, for it had not yet been invented when built in 1913.

• No sub-floor insulation beneath the tongue-grove fir.

• Lowest Energy Star rating possible forced air furnace (I believe the owners installed it “new” just a year or two prior to selling; looks good on paper, a joke in reality).

• 4-6″ rock wool and mouse droppings attic insulation, a seemingly 60/40 split between the two.

• No insulation between the eaves nor over the soffits.

• All original knob-n-tube wiring across the attic with splices into Romex as it came through the walls and into the breaker box. Fooled the inspector (or he just didn’t care) for the report clearly said, “All new wiring”. Fooled me too until I started crawling around in the attic a few years later, horrified at the mess.

• Chaotic, scary disarray of an attempt at plumbing.

• A guilty excuse for a traditional, tank water heater whose pilot light (when it was not put out by the leaking water) alone must have been ample energy to heat a half dozen gallons a day.

• A wood burning stove rested on several hundred pounds of sandstone which were placed on 4 inches of concrete which was poured onto a piece of 3/4″ plywood which was, believe it or not, placed on top of the Brady Bunch orange carpet and cat-piss soaked backing (I kid you not). This assembly was so heavy (and ill designed) that the north side of the house slumped four inches over a twenty foot run!

In the winter, the furnace would run nearly non-stop in an attempt to maintain just 60F degrees. At least eighty-five percent of the time on, the remaining down-time more likely due to sheer fatigue for trying so damn hard than the wall mounted thermometer giving permission to take fifteen.

At the worst of it, having grown completely fed-up with the inefficiency and filth of forced air, I removed the furnace and duct work from beneath the house only to head out on another roadtrip for Terra Soft. When I returned, I had but one heat source in the entire house which was hard pressed to maintain 48F degrees by day and a low of 36 or 38 at night. On the other end of the house, despite an electric space heater, my feet literally froze to the bathroom floor as I brushed my teeth.

A few years prior, perhaps just two or three after the house was purchased, my parents came to help me transform what was the primary entrance through a screened-in porch into a breakfast nook with the entire southern wall rebuilt in glass block.

However, after two weeks effort, the porch was demolished but the new wall was not even started, a sheet of plastic stretched and stapled across the 15′ x 7′ span … for an entire year. I recall enjoying snow flurries in my kitchen, the neighbor’s cat on my couch when I cam home at night, and more than a normal supply of mice, unwanted but not altogether horrible guests for they remind me that mammals are capable of surviving in harsh extremes.

This is not a description of my house alone, rather a typical, turn-of-the-last century home in Northern Colorado or anywhere in the Midwest where wall insulation had not yet been invented; electrical wiring, forced air, and plumbing were remodel projects done on the cheap by inexperienced home owners or friends who claim expertise demonstrated by their ownership of tools.

… to “Silk Purse”
And now for a decade of improvements, a complete make-over:

• 1998-2005: Major remodel projects such as the installation of solid oak, tongue-n-grove floors, re-plumbing the entire house, expansion of the bathroom and simultaneous reduction of the number of doorways into the kitchen, construction of a poured concrete countertop rimmed by 13 layers of 1/16″ hand-laminated oak, installation of custom built oak cabinets and five bulk food bins, construction of an exterior entrance to the basement to replace the trapdoor in the kitchen floor, and all interior walls repainted (at least once, sometimes twice).

• 2002: Planted 3 aspen trees on the south east corner of the house.

• 2002-03: Replaced south wall of kitchen with glass block.

• 2004: Planted three additional aspen trees and a relatively fast growing, large bush (sorry, forgot the name) to provide shade from the afternoon sun by summer, and allow direct solar gain in winter.

• 2006: Installed tankless water heater (which requires no pilot light) for on-demand, non-stop hot water. Seriously, why has all of Europe, Asia, Central and South America used these for decades and yet North America is just now considering them?

• 2006: Removed rock wool insulation from the attic.

• 2006: Removed 3 layers asphalt shingles and 1 layer wood shakes, then resurfaced entire roof with plywood, Iceshield over the soffits, felt, and 50 year shingles. Fiddler Through the Roof provides a humorous side-story about this project.

• 2006: Installed 4 double-pane, crank-open skylights which drastically cut thermal build-up during otherwise hot summer days. I have noticed a tremendous reduction in heat retention in the lower living quarters following the installation of these windows.

• 2006: Finished kitchen floor with ceramic tile to absorb heat in the winter, remain cool in the summer. (see photo of glass block, above).

• 2006-08: Replaced forced air with heating unique to each room. Installed a natural gas stove for the living and dining rooms and den. Installed 220V electric space heaters (3 total), one each in the kitchen, bathroom, and new-addition workshop. The manufacturer recommended the coil + fan model as 15% more efficient than “hydronix” which is 10-14% more efficient than traditional baseboard “cal-rod” models.

• 2006-09: Rewired entire house, top to bottom with an emphasis on electric circuit load balance, logical room organization, and ease of migration from grid-tied to inverter breaker box should the needs change.

• 2007: Installed (only to remove a year and a half later) traditional fiberglass batting between the rafters in the attic, as detailed in the story Shot in the Back.

• 2007: Sprayed Icynene expansion foam beneath the kitchen, laundry, and bath floors as well as a “rim shot” to seal the small, unfinished basement (which now keeps the pipes from freezing even without heat tape).

• 2007: Replaced all windows with double-pane, low-e glass in vinyl frames. Treat all edges of all windows, inside and out with silicon and where appropriate, new wood trim.

• 2008-09: Replaced all entry doors with exterior grade, solid fir doors.

• 2008: Blew cellulose insulation (made from 100% post-consumer, finely shredded newspaper treated with a fire-retardant chemical) into the walls, a procedure which requires drilling a few hundred holes, one high and one low between each exterior wall stud, and then applying a vacuum hose with nozzle and high pressure air to force the insulation into every nook and cranny. Incredibly effective!

• 2008-09: Replaced both front and back doors with exterior grade, solid fir doors. This fall removing a 3rd door from the west wall, to be replaced with a circular window.

• 2008-09: Added 200 sq-ft addition (workshop) on west side incorporates an application of Icynene expansion foam between the 4″ stud walls and 10″ rafters for an audio, vapor, and radiant/convective barrier that is truly impressive — just 4″ foam provides the equivalent R value of 6-8″ fiberglass plus the added audio, vapor, and radiant barrier which fiberglass does not provide. The two hand-crank skylights coupled with the two double-pane, sliding windows provide for natural circulation in the summer months, a cooling tower effect which is highly effective.

See “What was learned?” below for more information.

• 2009: Sprayed 4″ Icynene expansion foam insulation between all rafters in attic for an audio, vapor, and radiant/convective barrier; blew 6″ cellulose insulation between attic floor joists before the application of 3/4″, tongue-n-groove wafer board.

• 2009: Installed a ceiling fan in the living room and dining room (each) to encourage efficiency through air circulation in both summer and winter.

• 2009: Completed the design, fabrication, installation, and wiring of a rooftop 840 watt solar photovoltaic array, 300Ah battery backup, and grid-tied inverter which was on September 22 approved by the City of Loveland Electric Utility as the first battery-backed, grid-tied solar photovoltaic system in the district.

What was learned?
It is far simpler, faster, and less frustrating to build a new house than remodel an old. But that is a lesson anyone who intentionally acquires an historic home already knows, and for some incurable reason repeats a few times in his or her life.

Overall, it is possible to take a relative piece of s&*! and turn it into something quite nice, even energy efficient if you put enough thought and time and yes, some money into it (but far more time than money).

In quick breakdown, consider the following:

• Insulation, insulation, insulation. It is the answer to just about every home heating and cooling issue. Insulation by its very definition is a means of blocking the movement of heat from one place to another. The more energy transfer is kept in check, the less energy your home requires to maintain the inside climate as you desire. Consider blown cellulose into existing walls or Icynene expansion foam for attic eaves and new construction.

• Learn from the past. Returning to the methods of the 1800s, look again at room-to-room radiant heating, individually powered or supplied by a central boiler. It just makes good physics sense. A flame more effectively heats a liquid (water) or solid (metal) than it does a gas (air) as a liquid is far more dense, the molecules in closer proximity for energy transfer. Hot water or the hot surface of a stove will transfer radiant (infrared) heat to floors, walls, furniture, even people far more effectively than trying to heat comparatively far less dense air (as with a furnace). This is why it feels so good to walk into a room heated by a wood burning stove vs a central air furnace.

• Central air is not a good thing. Central air is a terrible, dirty, disgusting, bad for allergies, bad for the pocket book excuse for developers to use words like “simple” and “intelligent”, making the customer feel good about buying a home which offers the least efficient means of heating a home possible.

• Do you need cooling? First consider ceiling fans, improved insulation, doors, window pane and frames, thermal window shades; passive cooling via opposing (top to bottom, East to West) windows; shade trees, an attic fan and/or a swamp cooler. And if you do already have but desire to improve your AC, consider all of the above anyway, as well as a heat pump which pre-cools / heats your central air by circulating a compressed liquid through closed-loop pipes which run 30-40′ into the ground.

• Thermal containers do work! While not originally intended as an energy efficiency effort, it is now very evident that the addition of the porch-workshop (described above), which covers the entire west end of my house, does keep the house considerably cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter as it provides a thermal barrier to both extremes.

For more information about walls and rooms providing thermal containers or barriers, you may want to read-up on double envelope houses, an invention of the mid ’70s; or consider the value of wrap-around porches and how these shaded spaces provide for cooler air drawn into interior living spaces in the summer months.

• Be open to experimentation. I am now heating each room (or set of rooms) nearly independent of the others, experimenting with a radiant gas stove, recessed 220V electric space heaters (radiant coil + squirrel cage fans), and soon, a south-facing solar black-box “heat dump” for the bedroom. The later, passive heating system can be built of a steel or copper clad box with river rock or water bottles inside to absorb and retain heat by day, then radiate by night. This method of heating is being implemented by the Navajo as a completely 100% renewable, no electricity required means of heating their homes.

By Kai Staats|2017-04-10T11:17:45-04:00October 5th, 2009|At Home in the Rockies|3 Comments

Bouldering at Stanage, England

Driving in the North of England, on the narrow, winding roads is as anticipated–magical. The countryside has seemingly not changed for hundreds of years. Small villages with quaint roadside shops. Dark forests. Roads so narrow it is amazing cars are even allowed, let alone parked or passing. Fog banks rolling across the stone walled farm lands and sheep dotting the landscape as far as the eye can see.

Having checked the prices of B&Bs over local pubs, Fulden and I determined we could purchase a tent, sleeping bag, foam mat, and spork (spoon-fork) from a shop just across the street from The Outside Place in Hathersage for half the price of two nights in the least expensive accommodations. (Certainly subject for another blog entry is the ludicrous cost of everything in this country)

We camped at the Stanage National Forest campground, just below the Plantation. It was beautiful. Past a cattle guard, a single-lane blacktop road takes you twisting down, down along one of the countless thousands of hand built stone walls through a gate and into the open, grassy terrace of the campground. The manager was very accommodating, offering the loan of a map, books, and climbing information. Steaming hot showers are available as well.

At dawn of Saturday morning, the wind was so fierce the tent temporarily collapsed (inverted) and I had to press it back to its upright position, from the inside.

We took the trail from the campground through the forest and to the Plantation, soon climbing in what were most certainly gusts over 50MPH driving sideways mist and debris. But the temperature was tolerable due to the cloud cover, the rock remaining dry on the leeward side of the boulders. By evening, the wind died down and the sun came out. The final two hours of climbing were incredible.

Although colder, Sunday was mostly sunny and replete with what seemed to be half of England at this popular destination. Entire families on ropes, toddlers bundled up and bound at the base of the crags; eager kids in bright red helmets crawled over warm-up boulders like ants over a fallen bowl of icecream; proper boulderer without helmelts but with pads, and those who were just out for a hike along the few miles of trail that run the length of the gritstone ridge.

True to its reputation, gristone may just be the most perfect substance on the planet for climbing. It is neither too sharp nor too smooth, a contiguous surface of friction. It offers decent crimps, incredible slopers, bomber ridge lines and finger pockets that hold from all directions. It is possible to just walk up nearly vertical surfaces without so much as a grain coming loose from beneath the rubber of the climbing shoe. Amazing.

In all, an incredible adventure.

By Kai Staats|2017-04-10T11:17:45-04:00October 5th, 2009|From the Road|1 Comment

At the Door of a Decade, Part 2

Three weeks ago the Fixstars Solutions’ Colorado operation was closed.

I have been waiting for the right words to move from mind to brain, from fingers to keyboard. I believe I have been waiting for something profound, something worthy of the closure of more than a decade of my life and yet this transition was neither sudden nor unexpected and therefore, perhaps, not worthy of a great deal of commentary.

Much of the value for which Terra Soft was acquired by Fixstars was eroded by decisions made by key vendors, then compounded by market trends and weak economies. Frustrating and certainly not foreseen last fall, I feel for Fixstars’ CEO Miki-san who spearheaded the acquisition of Terra Soft in challenging times as a means of rising above the average. I am certain he will find a new, solid direction.

Director of Engineering Owen remains on-board from his location in Victoria, Canada and is working with the Tokyo-based engineers to advance Yellow Dog Enterprise Linux (YDEL) offerings.

As I am no longer involved with the Yellow Dog, I am both thankful and sad for what was, excited and uncertain for what will be.

By Kai Staats|2009-10-01T09:52:36-04:00September 18th, 2009|At Home in the Rockies|0 Comments

Of Sticks and Stones

The stories we tell ourselves
Throughout the past twenty years, I have made opportunity to talk to, and sometimes interview people living on the streets, people without a home. In Phoenix, Northern Colorado, and most recently in Austin I have listened to the stories of those who found themselves– or made choices which placed them out of shelter and instead, in a sleeping bag beneath a bridge, in a recess between two buildings or two dumpsters in an alley.

It is not my intent to fix homelessness, for this is a job better handled by far more experienced and dedicated organizations. It is simply my desire to hear the stories, and in some cases to tell the stories to others.

In November of 2008 I was in Austin Texas for the annual Supercomputing conference. Late one night, I was walking down 6th Street to my car which was parked beneath the I-34 overpass. A man stood to my right, also waiting for the light to change. As we walked, I engaged him in conversation. It became readily apparent that he was without shelter that night, for he was looking for a place to sleep. I offered to get a hotel room for him, and he politely refused. I insisted, and he accepted.

That night Luciano and I talked for more than an hour. His voice, his demeanor, and his stories were compelling to me. At the door of the hotel room, I stated that I would return soon, to capture his stories.

In January, I flew back to Austin for two meetings with IBM, and with me I brought a camera and digital audio recorder. I spent two nights and an afternoon recording Luciano’s stories, and those of three other people without homes.

Their stories were familiar to me: family often within twenty minutes, a bad, sometimes violent relationship with a sibling or parent, someone who once said, “I hate you!” or simply a sense of pride stronger than the desire for a warm, clean place to sleep.

But what I have found to be prevalent in all these stories is negative self-talk, words used to describe one self, “My mother loves my sister more than me”, “I fucked up again,” or “My brother, he hates me”; and the vocabulary used to describe others, “My boss was an idiot!”, “I quit my job ’cause the guys in the shop were assholes,” and the most common, “I got fucked over!” or “I got screwed!” –a sense of being a victim to the world around them.

A few weeks ago I received a call from a young man whom I met in Austin when shooting with Luciano. He just wanted to check in with me, to say hello. I knew he had been looking for a job, and asked about his search. He responded, “I just can’t flip burgers any more. It’s money, but it’s hard when someone I know comes in and sees me behind the counter, in the kitchen. They don’t mean to say anything to hurt my feelings, but they ask, ‘Man! You still working here?’ I am 28. I fucked up a bunch when I was younger and sometimes, I still fuck up. I want to get my life straight again”

We talked for an hour, and I learned that he lived in a foster home as a kid. He has experienced instability and homelessness at a few levels, then and now. When I asked what he would like to do, for a job, he said he wants to be a counselor for kids in foster families.

I responded, “Then you didn’t fuck up at all.”

He said, “What do you mean? I have been to jail. I live in a shelter. I don’t have a steady job.”

“Exactly. That’s perfect. You have an education that no school can give you. You have experience to prepare you to be a counselor that cannot be matched by any formal education. Yes, you will likely need a degree in psychology or your basic teaching certificate, but man, you will be good.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. Do you think the kids you will work with would rather talk to some guy who is straight-laced, only talking about what he learned in school–or you? Who will they trust? Who will they connect with most easily?”

He paused, considering my words, and then said, “Yeah, I think you are right. I never thought about it that way. I have been there. I understand them.”

“Exactly. Stop telling yourself how you fucked up. Start seeing your experiences in this life as an education. There are no deadlines, no limits to when or how you learn. It doesn’t matter if you are twenty eight or sixty eight, you can start a new life and do what you know you want to do. Your friends who started their own business or have a steady job do not have your experience. They could never help those kids the way you can. So go do it.”

We talked again recently. He is moving from Austin back to San Antonio to stay with family until he can get a job and get back into school.

Words as weapons

A teacher says, “Wrong. Does someone else have the correct answer?”

A classmate says, “You are so stupid!”

A parent says, “I don’t love you.”

And to one’s own self, we might say, “I am worthless.”

I am growing to understand that these simple vibrations of the vocal chords, these sets of sounds strung together are perhaps the most important foundations for who we grow to become in our lives. Independent of how they are transmitted, between mouth and ear or fully internal to our own heads, words received without filters and without boundaries can penetrate deep into the very marrow of our self-identity and framework.

Instead, the teacher says, “No, but let’s work on this together to find the correct answer.”

A classmate says, “Hey, would you like some help with that?”

A parents says, “Right now, I am feeling disconnected and need some time to come back. Please give me this space.”

And to one’s own self, we might say, “I am feeling really low and without hope. But is is ok to be here, now. In fact, this low place is part of a natural cycle that everyone experiences. This low helps me to appreciate the high that is forthcoming. It’s going to be ok.”

Non-violent Communication
In my life, I have been blessed by parents who studied under Virginia Satir and Meril Tulis and by a recent introduction to Non-Violent Communication which has helped me to work through a struggle with tendency toward reaction instead of response.

Through my own work and through listening to others, I have come to believe that the words we hear in our head, the words we say to ourselves and to others, are the most powerful tools for change available to us.

By Kai Staats|2017-04-10T11:17:45-04:00September 12th, 2009|From the Road|0 Comments

Update from Morokoshi, Kenya

Steve Muriithi, founder of the Morokoshi Preschool writes:

Thank you so much for your letter and concern. i read your blogs and it was good.

sorry for what happen while you were here. this tells you that its not essay to live in Africa and you need a lot of strength to survive. lack of good health care sanitation is one of the thing that the school should focus to help this children. If what happen to you can happen to this small one then rest be assured that they will be past tense

Any way we have closed the school for holiday but we are having forty student from both primary and secondary who are are getting
[education] at our school. morokoshi have become a learning institution.

I’m so busy trying to help my people the children and also my work. But all in all things are moving so well and i finish building the class for baby. It look nice and Grace saw it … every thing is well and we trying to fight famine and hunger that have affected us. i wish you all the best in plan as the world economy continue to [hurt] all of us.

Moving Toward Sustainable Solutions

Food for Thought
According to the teachers and through general observation at Morokoshi, we believe roughly 10% of the nearly seventy preschool children arrive in the morning without having eaten since the prior day. In addition to the obvious issues surrounding malnutrition in the early, foundation years of physical growth, these children are less capable of learning and do daily show signs of listlessness and disconnection from the activities in the classroom.

The mothers of these children are very poor, too often without food nor income to sustain even the basics of daily needs for themselves or their children. Many are single, for all practical purposes, their husbands not living at home or not contributing to the family in a meaningful way.

A school lunch program is a means of addressing this issue, granting at least one meal a day to each child. In the U.S. the National School Lunch Program was initiated during the 1930s and then formalized in the ’40s as a means of making certain every child received at least one meal a day.

A quick Google search for “school lunch program” +kenya demonstrates how many external organizations are now providing food to the children in Kenyan school systems as the Kenyan government does not now (to the best of my knowledge) nor will likely carry such a program in the near future.

Therefore Span volunteer Grace Proctor and Steve Muriithi, owner of Morokoshi, initiated the Learning Lishe Program, a school lunch program. The Lishe Program begins with the “shamba” (Swahili for “farm”), rented land adjacent to Morokoshi which was planted with corn and beans early this spring as a means to long-term, renewable food source for immediate consumption, seeds for replanting, and sales of excess (if any) to the local market.

The women who work with the Lishe Program last week harvested the first crop of beans. I have been informed by Steve that due to poor rainfall, the crop is ample only to be used to reseed the field for the next season. We hope the corn (planted in the same field with alternating rows) will harvest with better results, but it too needs substantially more rainfall than what has arrived to date.

For now, Grace, Steve, and the teachers (who prepare the fire and food) have dedicated themselves to providing one cup of porridge for each child each day at the cost of $50 USD per month, or $600 per year to feed seventy children once each day.

The Transformation of Goals
Chris and I came to Morokoshi with intent to upgrade the solar PV array which Rie, Cameron, and I installed in May of 2008, and to build a composting toilet.

What could have been a two to three day project required ten, but ultimately we completed the upgrade of the PV array (I will share more about this project in a later blog entry; yes, the solar panel frame really is pink) which now boasts 8 panels for a total of 260 watts, a BlueSky solar charge controller, and Magnum Energy inverter resulting in the rejuvenation of the batteries to some degree, and vastly improved power delivery and duration.

At Steve’s request, it was our second goal to build a toilet for the growing student population. While unlined pit toilets are the norm in Kenya, Chris and I desired to provide a toilet which eliminated contamination of the ground water, improved sanitation, and provided safe, organic fertilizer. Our research shows that waste from a single human can support roughly 250Kg of food-crop per year. We conducted extensive research prior to our departure, brought printed documents and educational material, and shared these with Steve.

Yet the maintenance of a composting toilet is far greater than that of a pit toilet, if it is to be safe as it resides in close proximity to food preparation and the classrooms. While a pit toilet is certainly not the ultimate answer, the potential of massive disease outbreak of a poorly maintained composting toilet seems a higher risk.

Steve, Chris, and I spoke extensively on the subject, pacing the area behind Steve’s house, between the new slab for water tanks and the clothes line and the outdoor shower. Ultimately, after many evenings of conversation, Steve decided to build a test composting toilet on a small, family scale to determine if it was applicable to the school as a whole. Chris and I agreed to this approach and are eager to support his effort, with additional research and designs.

This level of conversation set in motion the process of reconsidering our goals at Morokoshi. It was a complex array of adjustments and refocusing, even debate as to what is in fact the best use of our limited time as volunteers.

Sustainable Solutions
For me, personally, in the first few days at Morokoshi, I came to realize how easy it is (and has been in the past) for any volunteer to arrive in a cloud of dust–hammers pounding, saws cutting, and drills whirring with unbridled passion to complete projects confined by impossible deadlines in challenging situations. But in the end, it is far too possible to spend little time with the very people we as volunteers come to support. Volunteers go home with photos of finished projects and smiling faces on the day of completion, but if the hard question is asked, Did we truly solicit change?

In many places (Morokoshi is an exception) volunteers return the following year to find a project exactly as it was left, or in a state of decay, or disassembled altogether. To provide opportunity for sustained change, there must be a complete buy-in, involvement, and support by the same people who are the recipients of the well intended project.

To use the ancient phrase, Did we provide a fish for a day or teach how to fish for a lifetime?

The Unfolding of a Systemic Solution
Our conversations began with the core concern for the children to receive one good meal a day. From there, the domino effect took hold, for the best means of feeding the children is through local production of food. To raise vegetables in any quantity requires a dedicated, dependable source of water. In Kenya, this is becoming more difficult to obtain for deforestation and changes in weather patterns are quickly leading to unreliable rainfall.

However, even chaotic weather patterns may produce ample water if captured and stored for when it is later needed most, delivered as a managed commodity.

This process lead to a discussion of reuse of gray water, water used for washing clothes, dishes, and floors, which lead to a discussion of how to move water from a catchment source the place where food is being grown using the natural force of gravity.

Now, this is where it got fun.

Chris, who has professional experience as a surveyor in Colorado, and I built a home-made surveyor’s level using 2 boards, duct tape, 2 screws, a 6″ metal pipe, 24″ rebar, a rock for counter-balance, iPod with a level app, camera, and bright orange lid to a plastic container.

Chris, Grace, and I surveyed Steve’s property and the adjacent ‘shamba’ to determine the potential flow of water in an improved, planned water shed. I then built a spreadsheet which calculates the quantity of water which may be captured with each centimeter of rainfall given a particular number of centimeters of rainfall.

With this, we calculated that we need 12,000 liters (4 x 3,000 liter tanks) to support the basic needs of 80 students, teachers, and Steve’s family during three months drought. We also determined that to capture and store ample water to support one acre of crops was cost prohibitive, even physically impossible. Therefore, any water for raising crops in an open field must come from natural rain fall supplemented by irrigation from a bore hole, which is on average a $30,000 USD proposition.

We realized that if we were to control the growing environment, the light, humidity, and water (from source to recapture), we could solve the greatest issue we faced–the ratio of liters of water to kilograms of crops. That is how the greenhouse was born, the need for a controlled ecosystem in which we recycle, reuse, and rejuvenate.

In my next entry, I will showcase how we built the greenhouse with the assistance of more than thirty women from the Nina Agricultural Initiative. It was amazing …