A long overdue greetings, everyone!
Things, including me, have been crazy lately. The future is clearer now than it was yesterday, though still not as clear as I would like it to be. Informative, eh?
At least the next month is fairly clear: this morning Tomota and I, as President and Technical Secretary (respectively) of the non-profit association Tile Tasuma (www.tiletasuma.org) signed a contract with the Mali-Folkecenter, an NGO that is very involved in community oriented ecological and renewable energy projects.
Over the next month we will build and test and, if we have time, revise a solar thermal system which will be used to produce Shea butter. The processes we’re interested in are the boiling and the drying of the nuts. I have been provided with very little data about the drying of Shea nuts, as this is the first year MFC is involved in the project, so I have essentially designed a fruit and vegetable dryer, hoping that it won’t be too far off what we need and that we’ll be able to modify it according to what we learn.
We started buying the materials today, will continue tomorrow and then will work like mad to get another Helios concentrator built ASAP which will give us the most time to develop the applications. The idea is to prove the concept of a solar Shea nut process, which would open the door to a longer, more involved project.
I soon have to make the decision if I am staying in Mali for the summer or not. A great number of factors are weighing on the decision but the deciding factor is essentially whether or not I land a paid contract which would span the summer. If I don’t, I’ll set up the association here with funds to continue in my absence, while I go back to Canada to sort myself out financially and personally before returning to Mali sometime in the fall.
Again, sorry for not writing more often sooner, but things have been more trying than I have let on. Normality has been more or less restored, so expect more frequent blogs.
L
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