I just bought a 30W solar setup and am having it brought up to my village in a few weeks, so I can have my computer and entertainment for the winter. I am also trying to get a Science Club together and want to have a wind/bicycle generator both as a project for the club and a way to get non-sun dependent power to my village (there was a week or two with no juice after a few weeks of rain in Jan/Feb). I have been trying to come up with my own design myself for the last month or so and was planning on using all the resource books at the PC library to figure out the AC->DC conversion, but all the stuff here just has a generator plugged in. I’m kind of struggling right now with a way to do it. I’m going to keep looking for books here for now.
But now that winter has come, the skies are a ton clearer. No electricity anywhere even close (and even the closest electrified towns have only a few lights (and no street lights)) means I have some crazy stars at night. The Milky Way stretches across the entire sky. Pretty cool. I’ve been trading some of the different mythologies about constellations with my brothers which is always entertaining. Plus we have a whole different sky full of stars down here, so a lot of stuff is unfamiliar. I am working on taking pictures of the stars with my camera. I can’t set the exposure long enough to do star trails, but I can get some decent images from the tripod. A southern hemisphere star gazing book would be awesome, though.
Anyway, I have to get back before it gets too dark here. The streets of Maseru after dark have been less than safe lately. I’ll post something new after I get back to Durban. I’ll have lots of fun stories from that trip I am sure, plus one good story from this weekend, but it deserves its own moment to shine.
