Of Hammocks and Fluid Mechanics

"It's an act of worship for me. I have been given a specific skill set for engineering work and while I'm not the type of person who can get up in front of a church group and play music, I can sit behind a desk and do calculations. Hopefully, I can bring glory to God that way."
-Ryan McGhee 2007

The first day or two after arriving at the Villa Helen's hotel, we had some design work and calculations to perform. Lisa, Eduardo, and Teresa were fresh out of a class called Fluid Mechanics, which studies the flow of fluids like water and air. They enthusiastically tackled a pipe flow calculation and were somewhat excited to break out their calculators! Engineers!

I don't know what Eduardo is frowning about here. Maybe he was reviewing the week's plans and saw that he was scheduled for food poisoning one day. Or maybe it was the slow Internet.

Ryan and Diana working on a budget tracking system. We blasted through over $20,000 in two weeks. Any undocumented purchases come out of my pocket, so I recruited Diana to be our team accountant. She kept track of everything and gave me real-time reports on how much money we had spent and on what things. This was wonderfully helpful and allowed me to focus more on other aspects of the project.

Liz and Juan were the only Electrical Engineers besides myself. Everyone else was Mechanical Engineering (except Diana who is Biomedical). So Juan and Liz spent a lot of time designing the electrical distribution grid we are deploying in Pueblo Nuevo. They had to make sure we used enough cable to make sure each home had adequate voltage, but do so with while minimizing the costs and lengths of the cables. This type of balancing act between competing, limited resources, is a typical engineering task.

David was watching and learning in this picture, but often, Juan and Liz were working together by themselves. We started calling them Juan and Two. Get it?

Galaxy Wave

The adventure began fifteen days ago: Sunday, May 17th. My team of 10 engineering students flew from Houston to the island of Roatan, Honduras. We expected the unexpected, were preconditioned to be flexible with plans and schedules, but were still surprised when the Roatan earthquake hit 11 days later! But I am getting ahead of myself. That's another post.

Arriving in Roatan, we took the ferry known as the Galaxy Wave for the two-hour trip across the Caribbean to the coastal city of La Ceiba, Honduras. Our mission: to launch a new village-level electricity company in a remote rural village, and to repair a pico hydroelectric system installed last year in another village.

This is the discount ferry, Reina Rusto. We went ahead and splurged on the Galaxy Wave instead, on account of it having air conditioning and life boats, in that order.

Dramamine was available free of charge but the ride was pretty smooth and no one got sea sick... at least on the journey in. On the journey out we had rougher seas and several queasy engineers.

The Caribbean is blue and beautiful here. In the distance is the island of Roatan slowly sinking over the horizon.

Lisa came back for a second trip, a veteran from last year with an unshakably good attitude. Here she is enjoying the sea breezes and trying to stay cool in the intense Central American sun. The air conditioned seats filled up before she could get one, so she had to ride on deck.

Two weeks later on the return voyage, however, Lisa did not fare well in the rough seas. I was talking to a friend when Diana came to tell me Lisa was feeling bad. I jumped up to check on her, and when I first saw her she was a pale green color, almost like in cartoons, and was obviously feeling terrible. We went outside and got her a 7up, but the drink and sea breezes were not enough, and she lost her breakfast. Poor thing. I tried to help her by keeping her hair out of it and saying encouraging things. She was a trooper, actually. I would have been crying and/or fainting for sure. The wind sent her breakfast flying and we were both kind of messy by the time she was finished. But I could tell she felt better just from her countenance. I was almost as relieved as she was.

Having your student throw up on you might not sound like a normal part of being a professor, and maybe it isn't. But to tell you the truth, I didn't mind at all. The whole event evoked strong paternal emotions in me, and I felt like I was with one of my own children. I would have done just about anything for her at that time. I love my job.

Honduras Bound Sunday

In about six hours I leave for the airport. I am meeting ten engineering students and we are headed to Honduras to work on electrification systems in rural villages and eat lots of refried beans and plantains. Actually, my flight doesn't leave for three more days, but I want to get to the airport plenty early on account of security. :

You know, I really don't like flying. I like being other places, but not so much the getting to other places. Turns out the only way to do the former without doing the later is by reading a book or, say, daydreaming. I think this trip I'll choose daydreaming. There's seldom any food poisoning, and the humidity is lower than the real Honduras.

I don't really have anything to say, I'm just procrastinating going to bed. Sorry to waste your blogging time with empty words, but frankly, you should be used to that by now. Did you know "blogging time" in Spanish is "tiempo blogi" but you have to pronounce it the Spanish way, like "blo-hee". I'm a natural with the languages...

Surprise Letter in the Mail Today

I was writing on the computer this afternoon when The M dropped a fat letter in front of me. It was hand-addressed from someone whose name I didn't recognize. Washington state? I only know two people that live in that whole state, and their last name is the same as mine. As I opened it, curious and skeptical of it's contents, I remembered another hand written letter I got from some conspiracy group from, where else, San Francisco. I still don't know how those nuts found me. The Internet, I suppose. And because I watch too many FBI shows, I also had the thought that it could be a letter bomb. Really, I had that thought. Don't judge me.

To my surprise and delight it was a letter from Lee, the man who received my blood marrow stem cell donation about two years ago. We had been kept anonymous by the National Marrow Donors Network that had matched our blood tissue types way back when. But after a period of isolation, they allow donors and recipients to get each others contact information. I remember filling out a form and mailing it to the Network, but I never heard anything else about it... until this afternoon.

Lee has three grown children, the oldest of which is a year older than me. One of his daughters and his wife also wrote letters and included them in the envelope, along with a bunch of pictures. They were all very grateful, which made me feel rather strange. While I'm sure their gratitude is genuine, I don't feel like I deserve it. Lee called me a hero. I don't feel like a hero. I'm just a guy that got a bunch of shots and made a few extra trips to Dallas. Heck, the Network bought my meals and put me in a hotel. I think I got a pretty good deal.

He called me his blood brother. That phrase struck me. It is true, literally, since the procedure. All his marrow was killed by a massive dose of chemo, and then they implanted my blood marrow stem cells in his bones. Pretty soon they took root (or whatever) and his body started making my blood in its bones. Far out, eh? Now his body has one set of DNA, but his blood has my DNA. Hope he doesn't commit any serious crimes.

Still, it did make me feel good that Lee called me a hero, even though I don't feel like it applies. At least he thinks I am. He and The M too. Maybe all we need is someone, or perhaps a handful of folks, to really think we are something special. They may be delusional, but at least they're happy in their delusion. I'm alright being the hero of someone else's delusion.

Don't think this post is meant to be false humility or a pitiful attempt at fishing for kudos from the blogosphere. It's not that. It's me just trying to capture my emotional response to an unusual letter in the mail. Er... that's it.

Engineers with a Mission Party

Thursday evening The M and I had a dozen or so Engineers with a Mission students over to the house for our traditional lasagna dinner. I put out disposable cups and wrote the names of some of the poorest and richest countries on them. So for example, someone drank from Burundi with its $600 GDP per capita, while someone else drank from Qatar, with over $100,000. Cups were assigned at random to emphasize the fact that one can't control the country in which you are born: rich or poor. I thought myself clever for this, which is not hard.

Kim, Joe, and Sarah are some of the newest members of the PIT Crew. (PIT stands for Project Implementation and Testing) We have some of the highest caliber students in our organization!

After a few years of being president of the Baylor chapter of EM, Jonathan will be graduating this May. He has been on three trips with me overseas: Kenya once and Honduras twice. He and I have found ourselves in many interesting situations together. Without going into a lot of details, these situations range in topic from undersized toilet facilities, to Cuban cigars, to sleep-deprived fits of laughter!

We gave Jonathan a Honduran bean pot as a thank you gift for all his hard work. I'm going to miss him after graduation; I count him as a good friend and we have a special connection. He and Katie are getting married in October and we are invited to the Kansas wedding!

David, Eduardo, and Brian (clockwise) are all going on trips this month. David to Rwanda, and the others to Honduras with me. I put this photo in as evidence that engineers can, indeed, laugh.

We ate together and socialized and played Wii golf and generally had a good time. The M and I really like being around the students because they are mature enough to carry on intelligent conversations with good social skills, and yet they are young enough to be energetic, optimistic, and just plain fun.

Perhaps I made the coffee a little too strong...