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I can’t believe I am almost finished, who thought 2 years would go by so quickly! Honestly there were days when I wondered why I was doing all this, sweating, missing family and friends and eating lots of rice and beans only to be a mildly effective development worker… but I guess, like all former Peace Corps people I’ve talked to, it was worth it. It was changing.

This last week in Sal has been full of goodbyes, and in traditional Cape Verde style, they are all good-bye PARTIES

Friday Jacky, Sheila, Bevely and a bunch of my good friends got together at the Chã Matias center and threw me a surprise going away party (I was slightly suspicious since Jacky was rushing me over there at 7pm on a Friday, not usually business hours!). That was right after I had tea with my favorite Excel students, some older women who I’ve been working with over the summer. We had a nice snack, yummy home-made mint tea and cous-cous (cinamon mandioca flour cake bread thing, quite tasty when hot).

Then we had a official goodbye dinner with all our work buddies on Saturday, which consisted of lots of dancing, 2 quick and sappy speeches by Jacky and I after recieving a City Hall thank-you tile, pen and key chain (yay for free stuff!) – Jacky really pushed me into the speech giving since I shy away from the mic, I get trembley fingers! Somehow I got over the butterflies and we sang La Bamba for everyone (who knew I was a famous diva in a past life?) and then the night became a kareoke fest, CV style as we read lyrics off a small notebook that belonged to the painoman.

Here are some pics to recount the goodbyes, then its off to Praia for my final medical checkups and exit interview:

The President commemorating us at the Municipal Week of Education

I'll miss his early morning whine and cuddley paws *Gizado*

all smiles today!

Lovely thank-you from Antero and Mario

Our lovely rendition of La Bamba... la la la...

Singers: Ana Rosa, Sheila, Nanda and Zaza - 100% talent!

The malageta shot burned lip to stomach – we tried to go dancing at a disco after that but this was kind of the end of the goodbye night for me (after steve told me horror stories of some locals who had the malageta shot come right back up, in front of the bar, i decided to take it easy…).

I'm well into this job now. After a month of classroom training in New York, I was sent to Illinois for a few weeks for on-the-job training and now I'm Wyoming going full time.

As for what I actually do in my job - I'm settling into a "Technical Advisor" position. You may have seen large wind turbine components sailing down the highway. First, these wind components arrive on the construction site. GE sends inspectors to greet the drivers and inspect the loot for damage. If it is badly damaged, they send it back to the factory. If it's good, the construction company will offload the component with a small crane.

Once all these pieces arrive in good shape, my coworkers and I step in and inspect the components to make sure all of the ladders are intact, bolts are torqued to the correct value, all of the bus bars (the aluminum rods that carry the electricity down the tower) are in good shape, etc. We make sure everything is installed to specification. Then the construction crews erect the towers. One medium-sized crane will set up two tower sections and build the rotor on the ground. Then the next day or so, another big crane (350 ton lifting capacity, 500 ton by weight - that's a 1 million pound crane) will come along and "top out" the tower - finishing out the last tower piece and setting the nacelle (the box behind the rotor where the electricity is generated) and the rotor.

My coworkers and I will do another inspection from top to bottom once the tower is built. We make sure the turbine is perfect - all parts are accounted for, are installed correctly and are clean. Once we finish our job, our commissioners plug her into the grid, hook her up to a GE-wide ethernet system and finally turn her on. If all goes well, she'll purr like a 21st century, $3million, 1.5MW cold-rolled-steel kitten.

Some numbers on the models we're erecting in Wyoming:
Each turbine is 80m tall. The rotor diameter is 77m wide.
Each turbine costs $3 million.
The output potential is 1.5MW. This is equal to the power consumption of 400-600 homes.
The expected lifetime is 20 years and the payback rate is 5-7 years (ie 13-15 years cool profit).
So bottom line, it's a clean energy cash cow if you have $3 million laying around.

(btw - These are my estimations coming from conversations I've had with different people in the past few weeks. They are not official numbers from my company. I'm just throwing something out there to wrap your head around if you're curious or want to spend $3M on something awesome.)

Anyway, I don't mean to over inform, I'm just trying to offer concrete information for anyone interested. I think my job is pretty awesome. And I'm certainly grateful for this opportunity to work and learn about this stuff.

Above are some pics from the job site.

I had one great video of the construction crew flying the rotor. It's pretty cool to watch... so I decided to put some more photos in there to show more of what's going on:




Also here's a link to my Peace Corps Manifesto, if you will, called "To Make A Village". It's a slathering of ideas on how to make Peace Corps better and simpler. And how to integrate new technology into the program:



okay well, I hope all is well with you good people.
until next time,
Brian

Photos of the first day in America for John:

Cape Verde will always been my home because of my family and friends that I meet along the journey. I have been in Cape Verde for three years (June 2007 to June 2009). I left for my Peace Corps service June 25th, 2007 for the Island nation of Cape Verde.

I taught computers, English, art, lifeskills, and worked on many projects. I got married to my wonderful husband after my service on August 14th, 2009 with his family and my family as witnesses. Then, we moved to Boa Vista were he was placed by the police department. We lived on Boa Vista for eight months. He saw more of the island then I did because he had access to the police vehicles for work. But we did see other parts of the island with our two friends.

We decided to move back to the States so he can go back to school and hopefully work as a police officer in America. And I want to go back to work because it was difficult to find a job on Sal Rei (politics).

We will be back to Cape Verde in the next couple of years to visit our friends and family that we haven't seen in so a long time. Cape Verde and America is our web.

I finally have time to post the photos that I have taken of the Island of Boa Vista. These pictures are in no order but a random selection of the last eight months on Boa Vista. It been an adventure living on Boa Vista.

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