One of my favourite Hugh and Laurie clips.
We’ve been planting trees in the field around our workshop. Four moringa (moringa arborea) and a mango tree. Moringa is a special tree and deserves it’s own separate blog post (when I get round to it). To save us having to water the plants each day, my colleague Caleb suggested we use glass bottles to do it for us.
After digging a small hole next to the plant, you fill it with water. Ensure the glass bottle, is fully filled with water, then tip it upside down and press it into the hole, pointing towards the plant. Water will be absorbed from the bottle as the soil and roots need it, so you only have to visit your plants every few days. It’s basically a low-tech drip irrigation. We are hoping the moringa trees will shoot up fast now. Apparently they can reach a height of 3 meters in a year.
On Tuesday, we put up this wind turbine. It’s attached to our workshop where we make them. It’s not an ideal spot for a wind turbine, but here, we can monitor the functioning of the different components. This morning, I took at battery reading and was pleased to see it was fully charged over night.
A less hunky selection of Kisumu Jua Kali shots from the making of the hot Kenyan mechanics calendar.
I can’t say I was overwhelmed with excitement about this photo session. Jua Kali translates as ‘hot sun’, and the afternoon lived up to that name.
I’m helping put together a tasteful calendar of Jua Kali artisans to help raise money for a training programme which will help train artisans to build small-scale renewable energy technologies. We think it’s an exciting idea. If you would like to buy a calendar, head over to indiegogo.com/accessenergy - hit contribute and choose the calendar.
