The National Forum on the Environment

Right. Remember what I said about blog frequency and craziness? Yeah.

So Monday rolled around, and there was no action on the budget. Not only that, but the guy who was supposed to help bring the Helios to CNESOLER didn't show up. I decided to go to the director of AMADER's home energy dept to speed things up. He understood, but couldn't influence things. I told him about my decisions regarding CNESOLER and he agreed that it would improve chances to get funding if I partner with a government establishment.

I went home without having accomplished much.

Tuesday started out the same… I was in an office trying to move things along when a brochure on the lady's desk caught my eye. The Mali-Folkecenter is apparently hosting the National Forum on the Environment. MFC is a pretty big operation, and I hadn't yet made contact with them, though it was in the plan. It didn't really connect just yet that I am in Mali. I look at the date, it says 29th of Jan 2008, not knowing what date it is I think for a moment, that's a shame that I missed it. Wait a minute… that's TODAY! At this point I still have significant doubts that we'd be able to do the necessary paperwork to get a vehicle, or register me or whatnot. Still, might as well ask.

Bam. To the directors office! 4 hours later we had dis-assembled the machine and transported it to the Palace of Culture, where the Forum was taking place. They gave me 10,000 F CFA to buy food to cook for people and I was on my way.

The next day we(and by we I mean she) cooked up a big stew for everyone.
Solar Fire Style: maxed out thermometer (that means +200C)
Ibrahim C Tomota says: Solar Fire, awww yeah.
So much stew.
lol poor SK-14, all broken and neglected:
Then there's the Association of Women Engineers who had a stand promoting their use of cardboard and tinfoil cookers with a heat resistant bag. They have to be imported from Holland, but have the advantage of being able to be transported like 30 to a backpack.
Mmmm so much solar cake. We made the mistake of using pots that were too big for cake, and they were burning at the edges and not done in the middle, so we massacred it a little bit and put everything on the baking trays.
I probably served cake to like 100 people.


It was good to the last crumb.
Haha in our enthusiasm for cake we let the focal point wander… on this oven we built the exterior side walls out of wood to save on tinsmithing, but we'll probably not do that in the future, considering it smolders a little if the focal point hits the tin on front.
I made tons of good contacts, met the minister of the environment a couple more times, and impressed the people who work at CNESOLER (I was hosted by their stand at the forum). Everyone is really enthusiastic, so we'll see what we can cook up.

This weekend is catch up on sleep time and kit maintenance. This coming week, if the money isn't available to start the papillon prototype I'm just going to buy enough materials to get started... the Habitat Salon is less than 3 weeks away, and is important enough to disregard protocol (what? me? disregard protocol?)