Entry: Guatemala Friday, March 09, 2007




So... ah... about this whole blogging thing.  It's time to write again.

In t minus 5 hours our four-person Engineers Without Borders team leaves for Antigua, Guatemala to begin a five day extravaganza of land surveying, people interviewing and site assessing.  Thus begins our official relationship with La Asociacion Nuestros Ahijados (ANA), an international NGO which "seeks to break the bonds of poverty through education."  

The work for this trip includes (at the moment),

  1. Cut/fill requirements for a soon-to-be vocational center:  Essentially they want to know about how much dirt they'll have to remove.
  2. Optimization of small house builds:  ANA offers famillies with children in its programs small houses free of charge, provided they own their own land.  The Wash U chapter of EWB launched a design competition in February to redesign/optimize these builds with a focus on sustainaiblity.   Winning design will be adopted by ANA and built in and around Antigua.
  3. Site assessment and erosion control plan:  Guatemala could teach New Orleans a thing or two about flooding and monsoon rains, and our third trip goal will be to assess an ANA property in a flood prone area on which a dental/medical/educational center will eventually be built.  We'll be looking for flood information such as intensity, duration, water height/speed, muddiness, etc. 
The last will afford the most technical challenges, but to address the house builds, we'll be interviewing the families living in the current design, and... well... we're engineers.  Making the connection between the physical world and the human reality promises to be a huge opportunity for both my professional and personal growth.

Needless to say, I'm stoked about it all.

Last little note, ANA is some sort of sub-NGO to the larger God's Child Project.  La Asociacion Nuestros Ahijados means The Association of Our Godchildren. 

All Engineering, no borders.
   3 comments

p.
March 27, 2007   09:41 PM PDT
 
righteous, my brother. i feel you re: academic profession and making contact/seeing the effect you can make with it. hope you're well.

i'm going to be spending five weeks on a rez in oklahoma in november (into december, of course). i'm pretty pumped. the hospital is at the base of a mountain, and after i finish up there, i'm free for a while (most likely the pagan holiday of christmas). will you be graduated and all that by then? otherwise, i feel like that might be an ideal time to hike and pack and stuff.

i'll talk to you long before then. just wanted to throw that out there. take care, friend.
brandon
March 10, 2007   01:07 PM PST
 
damn str8 your stoked. i'm stoked for you too.
Name
March 10, 2007   09:05 AM PST
 
Dan: I too rejoice to see your comments return. I can't honestly say I've been dreaming about you as did the lovely woman who wrote comments to the side of this box, but nevertheless you bring such a degree of wisdom, intelligence, provocative thought and downright nice-guy "stuff" to my inbox that no one else contributes. Be safe on your trip. I'll be looking forward to hearing about it in a future blog.
--- P.K.

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