Glom Tiang Yaai: First week in the world of Jatropha

Thanks for all your comments on my last blog, as always with Laos it has been a bit of a mixed bag since getting here. I have to admit to being mildly disappointed in the work program at LIRE, It is much more of a laptop, spread sheet, ghant chart, power point research project than actually putting something practical together(Phase 2 should be a bit more active ). So I have been locked in an air-conditioned office since I got here. On the plus side I have been locked in an air-conditioned office since I got here, which is pretty nice since the atmosphere becomes unbelievable oppressive just before the afternoon monsoon (about 3:30). It is rainy season here and Vientiane is remarkable quiet although I am astonished at the number of new buildings that has cropped up in the six short months since I was last here, and I’m sorry to say the architecture is awful.
The other thing is I have been asked to sign a confidentiality agreement with LIRE with regard to the project I am working on so I am very limited on what I can actually say about it other what I have spouted already, essentially making biodiesel form Jatropha. I can say that of the 12 people who are in the bio fuels team there are only 3 of us in the Laos office, there is a Paul a French mining Engineering student in his gap year and Edward who is English and a true academic he is the de facto team leader and is a agronomist from Oxford and seemed to have been everywhere and is a thoroughly nice chap. In a very short space of time seemed to have jelled into a cohesive unit and have a good working dynamic. We have managed to pull all the strands of the project together into something that is starting to make sense after what appears to be a inordinately long period of ‘knitting fog’ I can’t take the credit for being the catalyst for the phase one of the bio fuels project, more of just being in the right place at the right time, but hey I’ll take the credit if I can.
Yesterday I took the afternoon off to take a ride out to Doug’s place, to have a look at the new Abundant Water facility. To keep you up to speed, Abundant Water is a project run by a colleague of mine, from EWB (Engineers without Borders) Sunny Forsyth, a rather ingenious way of making water filters from local materials. www.abundantwater.org. Doug Handisides runs an engineering consultancy Lao Techno Engineering and has a compound on the North side of the city. Doug, Sunny and a few others I have yet to meet, have put together a R&D facility which is hoped to serve a duel purpose, firstly as a R&D and training centre and secondly as a tourist ‘attraction’ for Overseas visitors. This may sound a little odd but it has a good basis. Your average traveller to Laos is looking for something a little different than tourist travelling to Phuket or Koh Samoui, If you do a quick Google of Laos tourism it is difficult to find a trip which does not have the word ‘adventure’ in it somewhere ( which sums the place up quite well). Consequently, the overwhelming response you get when you ask talk to visitors here is a. they want to do something constructive and b. they want to do something with the locals. The plan is to offer one day ‘excursion’ to the facility bridging them out from the centre of town (about a 30 min tuk tuk ride) to AWHQ. They will meet with Nucam, who is a master potter and has been helping sunny develop the abundant water process, bizarrely her husbands name is ‘Kwan’. Have a go at making some small pots, firing them and then having lunch with Nucam and her family. Afternoon maybe an excursion (not figured this bit out yet) whilst the firing completes and the pots are allowed to cool down and then testing. Should be all do able in a day.
Anyhoo just to about to have a drive up to the RTC to meet with Master Kampu so BFN