The major project that I have been assigned to work on for my stay is helping with the building and development of the hotel project which is currently underway. I’ve been doing numerous small assignments to help with this development (including meeting with the client to discuss changes to the design, incorporating these changes into the drawings, and creating the structural panel design for the project). However, for the past 5 days, I had the opportunity to leave the office and go bamboo hunting!
Essentially, we spent the days driving around in a vehicle looking for usable bamboo. When we found some, we used the GPS tracker to chart our location. We also met with some farmers who had been growing bamboo for a couple of years. CO2 had started work with them previously and these meetings were more to check up on how everything was growing. Sometimes, we would just hop out of the car since the bamboo was visible from the road. Twice, we had to hike to the bamboo and I found this to be the most exciting.
From the trip, I’ve learned two valuable lessons:
1) Get hiking shoes: in the rainy season, running shoes are unable to handle the slippery and muddy slopes.
2) Large stalks of green bamboo are not smooth to touch! After picking up the thin stalks and carefully avoiding their thorns, I felt the need to touch the large stalks as well. Turns out the surface is covered in small hairs that cling to your skin. They’re itchy and are like thousands of small needles that embed themselves in your skin.
A “highlight” of my trip was my discovery of a new form of liberation. Given that in the countryside there are no restrooms and in Nicaragua there is no such thing as indecent exposure, the roadside became my new best friend. While most women (I’m told) wouldn’t go far from the vehicle, I would spend large spans of time looking for the perfect spot (which would provide me with enough privacy) as we drove along the ever bumpy gravel roads. I was only watched once (by a cow).
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r2bambu 