A biodigester takes organic waste (e.g. manure, food scraps, and plant matter), and employs anaerobic digestion with bacteria to break down the material and produce methane gas.  I worked with others at Michigan in the Pantanal Partnership project to design and build biodigesters in the Pantanal region of Brazil that could be used to generate gas for cooking.

This was a great project to be a part of – coming up with simple designs for biodigesters, learning Portuguese, and spending time on the Paraguay river in Brazil.  I’m going to try to write some things about where I traveled and the work we did!

After flying into Cuiaba, we visited schools in Cangas, Chumbo, and Porto Jofre and taught biodigesters principles to middle and high-schoolers, in addition to  building a “test” biodester at Cangas.  If you are wondering, this is where those places are (approximately)

 

The first week in Brazil was some adjusting.  Ethan is fluent in Portuguese (thank God), but Tommy, Ava, and I were kind of lost trying to talk to high school students and make sense of what they were saying.  Not many people spoke English at all.  Most everyone we met was excited to have us there though, and very accepting at my own fragmented attempts to speak Portuguese.  I tried to keep practicing and was able to build up enough vocabulary to explain a few things when teaching.

We joined morning soccer games with kids at Chumbo one day.  This school was interesting, and from talking to people it represented a common situation in rural schools in Brazil.  The teachers were on  strike (common for at least a month of each year), and so school was not in session.  However, the kids all lived close and were still around, and came to the school to hang out, play soccer, and eat some meals.  There was a school cook who gave us all some snacks after playing soccer:  cake and chocolate milk.  No lunch money, government-subsidized cheese, etc, like in the US – the food at this school and others we went to was like:  are you hungry?  then grab a plate.  The sense of community from this was refreshing and a welcome aspect of these small rural schools.

We stayed at a house in Cangas,

and at at orphanage called Nazare that was in Pocone.  The kids at Nazare loved playing with the camera. 

This is a start of writing about the trip… more to come!