Shelter, jobs and social stability in Lebanon

Last month I went to Northern Lebanon, on a short mission with CARE International, to help them figure out a strategy to deal with the dire housing problems faced by Syrian refugees.  To short cut to this presentation (more pictures than words, go here).  Almost immediately I was blown away by the scale of the crisis in Lebanon: a country of just over 4.2 million people is hosting almost 1.5 million refugees.  That's around a third of the population! Meaning that Lebanon now has the highest per capital concentration of refugees in the world.

Tripoli, looking East over the mountains towards Syria

Imagine Britain or France taking in 20 million people, and the kind of impact that would have on public services that people often complain aren't good enough as it is.  Well, it's not really any different for Lebanon, except that their public services have been in worse shape than those in rich European countries.  Talking of Europe, it appears that the entire EU block has offered asylum to a grand total of 134,000 Syrian refugees, so around 10% that Lebanon has taken.  Yet the population difference  is so great it means that Europe is offering refuge to 1,000 times fewer refugees compared to Lebanon.

Shelter after floods in Pakistan. Part 1. Sabina's story

This is Sabina, who I met during one of about 30 field trips I made in Sindh, Pakistan during my time working there, chatting with Mustafa from the local NGO, HANDS

Mustafa and Sabina.  I think they were talking abotu that solar light she's been using every night for over a year.  And the price of vegetables on the market if I remember rightly.  She said she can afford to buy veg only twice a month and grows none around her house.  She could absolutely grow food in raised beds outside her window.  That has to be (already is) the next addition to the way we work...

HANDS had found Sabina's family and community, displaced and in desperate need of help, after major flooding in September 2012. They brought it to the attention of DFID - the British agency for international development - for whom I was working as a humanitarian advisor.

Arabian Nights - in the arms of Green School

Two hours, they said.  Two hours of a high school play. Uh oh, this could be a long night…

But then it was beginning, gentle, exotic drumming floated over the humid night as a line of robed actors walked through us, with a confidence and grace that comes with knowing. “Asalam Alaikum” calls their leader, “Alaikum Asalam” intone the others, in unison, in rhythm.  We were in, I was spellbound.

Arabian Nights, the stories of the thousands and one nights, stories within stories, mysteries and comedies, tragedies and philosophies; acts within acts, all masterfully put together so we always knew where we were, who was who. The passion was palpable; I could feel the hours of preparation in the choreography as scenes and actors changed places or characters. Props? Who needs them? At one point they created a journey across mountains, through rivers and oceans, just by the movement of their bodies, the waving of the sea, the shape of a boat (arms linked together, the shape of a leaf). 

And how they unfolded each tale! I have rarely been so engrossed, charmed, inspired, amused and thrilled at a group of people working together on some scripted lines, some suggested scenes. 

Enthralled, enraptured we sat, perhaps 80 of us, parents, children, friends of friends, on cushions around the floor or along the amphitheatre steps under the leaf-like umbrella that forms the roof of this remarkable theatre and morning assembly hall (now transformed into the realm of original mysteries).

And how the school, this collection of incredible buildings, each exquisite and unique, that are host to a throng of passionate people from around the world, who we see in the day, busy in their comings and goings, in the never-ending endeavour of teaching, of learning, is transformed at night, the curved walls, the bamboo structures beautifully crafted together into a whole, like a basket, surrounded by over-storey coconuts and living bamboo. Dark green everywhere, the boisterous clouds overhead, the occasional howl of a forest creature.  This is quite a place.  And this night belongs to Ibu Sarita, our school’s drama teacher who has brought this performance to light and created a kind of magic.  And these young adults whose lives are surely enriched now, their memories of this time, this night and one other they’ll perform, which they will keep for their forevers.  

How great is this? To see that learning is more than memory, that memories are made from creating something that is beyond the one, part of a collaboration of efforts that weave light and sound and words.

 

“And the nights of Baghdad shone bright like day” they soared, in defiance and joy at once.  Joy and tragedy together, as we all know too well the bitter history of yesteryear, wrought by Western leaders who still live and breathe today. And so, from a thousand-year-old enchantments we are dumped into the folly of today. With the echoes of incredible wisdom in the original book that inspired this play – of love, the meaning of prayer, of sunset, God, the words that define an empire, death and infinite joy – the lights went down, the story done, the moment complete.  Like the outraged King at the beginning of this tale who only wanted the stories to continue, I only wanted more. Until dawn if need be, and beyond. 

To live in Bali... first impressions anyway

Immediately struck by light and sound, colour and smell, arriving in Bali, almost a month now..  Kira and I plus about four thousand other foreigners who happen to be in this particular slot of new arrivals.  Mostly tourists you'd think.  Who knows? Are we tourists? What are we doing here anyway? Well we are yet to figure that one out. For now we're here for school: the green school, a unique arrangement of outstanding bamboo buildings in the middle of a forest, where an exciting new approach to education is underway.  Right now we're not feeling very green haven flown half-way around the world and surrounded by concrete and car fumes at the airport.

Bali is, so far, a cacophony of different experiences. The ocean, open between here and Antarctica pulsates with waves every day, without fail, there's always something to ride.  The beaches are totally diverse - some black, others brown, some white, some covered in shacks selling grilled corn and fresh coconuts, others empty and desolate, farmland stretching right up close to the shore.

August is windy. So it's kite season.. look up to see a few dozen bizarrely-shaped specs shimmering there, often static on some kind of fixed lines into the middle distance, like stepping stones into the sky.

We ride by motorbike, until Monica arrives.  Two on a bike OK.  The school is maybe 25 mins inland across paddy fields which shine in morning light, and on the right day the volcanoe mountain looms in the background, cocunut palm pasted into the frame. Idyllic, or classic tropical scene. Until the junction...

A hundred, a thousands speeding cars, trucks and bikes. all at once, in a continual flow like  river of metal and fumes.  Eeek. and we have to cross into that? We wait.. see a break, follow some other nutter who's making the leap, and we're in, like jumping into a river, nipping around the slower moving mighty wagons, or cars. How slow are cars in this chaos?  Soon enough we're back to the side roads, and the air is fresh again.

Ubud is the cultural heart, where for decades a melting pot of creative types have been gathering. I stopped one day for a haircut.  Turns out to be a centre for therapy and massage, run by an elderly gent who was taught some ancient arts of meditation and massage passed down for generations.  Now it feels like the whole town is dedicated to this, with yoga and therapy retreats behind every garden wall.  Where surf lodges fill on the coast, travellers here come to stretch and breathe. And eat... the vegan cafes seem to outnumber the conventional. organic everything, dairy free banoffee pie - imagine? I've had food here i've never experienced before - and i'm not talking Balinese spice, but vegan creativity with the very same veg and nuts and fruit you find everywhere.

Everywhere bamboo, little baskets make of leaves with flowers and offerings, a little stick of incense wafting. in front of every shop, on street corners. And children learning how to weave and cut and make it all.  This I like.

Back to the sea - always the sea, warm and accessible, rock and sand.  This is where everyone goes to play. At weekends filled with locals from the towns and cities equally thrilled with the setting sun, selfies from every rock. Weddings and ceremonies.  Temples so near the beach, donging and haunting rhythms heard far out in the waves.

For Paolo Mellet - visionary, teacher, friend.

Paulo,

First off, I just can’t believe your’re not with us right now.  I am so used to being in touch pretty much all the time.

With crushing reluctance I’ve come to accept that one of my closest friends, mentors, ideas generator, building mate, fellow life adventurer has left us, for higher realms. We found out last week, middle of the night in our home in Islamabad, when our son Nikita called with the news.  We were all just stunned and speechless. It hardly seems possible, for someone who was so completely infused with boundless energy and ideas, as if they burst through his pores, his eyes …isn't just around the corner.

Completely gutted in every way.  Yet at the same time empowered by his life. 

And now by Ruth his incredible wife and equally inspiring partner.  Ruth somehow maintained  clarity and a capacity to share Paulo’s struggles to overcome a serious bout of malaria which kick-started a spiral of organ and system failure across his exhausted body; at 17 Paulo survived leukaemia but knew how his organs had taken a serious hammering, leaving him vulnerable, yet somehow with this octane-fuelled clarity of vision and direction.  Every few days Ruth would facebook updates in English and Portuguese (Brasileira, como ela), to muster us all into action to send positive images of a healing Paulo.  Hundreds of us would like and comment and share our love and hope and support.  Paulo had a LOT of friends, had reached a lot of people..

This is it.. Paulo has had a vision for this planet, a “design strategy” as he might say, to re-think the way humans live in the environment around them.  To transform the energy we put into destroying our ecology to repairing it.  A system of design that would increase people’s access to food through smarter use of their waste, cutting inefficiencies (that he saw everywhere, as if he had some eco-super-power to x-ray scan across communities and spot the numptified designs that have appeared around us).

  

struggling together with this 400kg oak beam...

He’s the only person I’ve ever met that could see the common thread between everything people do, from growing food, harnessing energy, dealing with waste, building homes, teaching children.  He had learned about permaculture way back, then he studied renewable energy, sustainable building and large scale water retention and management strategies.  He knew so bloody much stuff, and had this spider’s web of linkages going on constantly that connected strategies and designs from one part way over to the other.  For a while he became obsessed by mushrooms and fungi (well he was obsessed about everything..) and would insist you sit down for a two hour session watching some guy delivering a presentation on the stuff, then sit and watch you and say “so, you get it now, right?” then he’d explain how the waste coming off ethanol production could be excellent feedstock for fungi which in turn would provide goodies for fish, which would clean dirty water and provide irrigation for new plants for more ethanol, and on and on. 

This is Paulo's last presentation he sent me.  We'd been in constant touch about ways to deal with the disaster that human waste has become, but why it needn't be so. 

With Saffy, his sister Mary, and friends

We started chatting about all this in the green of Wales back in 2006, when we met, soon after we moved into small plot of land in Portugal completely covered in 30 years of brambles and spikey things, hiding old terraces, ruins and a massive renovation project.  Paolo liked this idea and offered to dive in with us.  And so he did.  Over the next couple of years we grafted away together tackling just about every concept and project that you can imagine, all the while Paulo chattering away an almost non-stop narrative of sustainability and compost, worms, gardens and water, mushrooms and underground life forms we know-so-little-about,  smoothies and aaargh!   I never went on a permaculture design course (2 weeks) because I think back on this time as a two year doctorate!

We grew together.  Our children Nikita and Kira must have been 13 and 7.  They absorbed too – and won’t forget. 

Under Paulo's spell Kira dives in to the
lime plastering too:)

How many times Nikita, Paulo and I would be the only ones around holding up some half-framed structure, Paolo rapidly slipping into a mood that emerges from having to work with such turkeys who take-so-long to get it.  Well Nikita got it pretty quick, I’m still in turkeysville but that’s another story).

With Nikita, bringing up this massive pre-fabricated structure that was to become the terrace for the Alambique

He would disappear for weeks on various missions.  To Croatia with Ruth to desing some mega straw-bale warehouse for his new umbrella company LUSH. Or to obscure communities of German inventors in Southern Portugal, come back bouncing with excitement about their new creations that turned sun rays into ice (the hotter it is outside the cooler the fridge).  I’m pretty much obsessed by anything low-tech and radical too, so we’d be there for hours plotting how we’d incorporate these into the aid world, into communities devoid of power and jobs, and how sun & ice could change the picture completely.  Especially if we included biogas, rainwater collection, constructed wetlands, and so on.  Integrated smart design.  Yes… I’m working on that. This has become my mission too. 

Paulo designed this entire straw bale section on the house, and led the construction with our family and friends.

We went crazy watching the local rivers change through the seasons, and Paolo let slip that kayaking was another of his hobbies (how many can a guy have!!??).  A few months later we had all the gear, and Nikita, Paulo and I would drive our van way up some secluded river and charge down, waterfalls and all.  These were great moments, staring over at each other in a strange mix of terror, exhilaration and what-the-hell let’s just do it screech, as we hurtled towards some new waterfall we hadn't had time check out first. In the pouring rain. (Argggh. where's the photos of these missions!??)

When we moved to Pakistan Paulo and Ruth used England as a pit-stop to the oasis that their Brazil was to become.  It sounded amazing there.  And I could read between the lines of messages and many skypes how he was infecting yet more ordinary mortals with his vision for a better world. 

With our multi-national team of beam-movers from Romania, England, Portugal, New Zealand, Scotland
from left - Nikita, me, Nik, Paulo, Shrek (Carlos), Hewel, Petrus, Ilie and Manuel (Neo). 

In Pakistan I became humanitarian “advisor” to the UK Government’s efforts to support post mega-flood recovery. Subsequent years brought equally intense rain and destruction.  Almost four years on I’m still there, supporting one of the largest shelter reconstruction projects ever – at over 120,000 homes and counting.

One of hundreds of amazing families i worked with in
Pakistan, discussing building with lime, how I'd learned
from Paulo and Hywel in Portugal. 

Almost everything I learned from Paulo I imparted here: the value of lime, appropriate shading and slaking of the stuff (this is a huge deal for the uninitiated – and has enabled people to build fully flood resistant homes for less than £300 each, meaning we reached 70% more families or saved about £50m compared to the conventional way of building houses).  I found myself stomping around lecturing anyone in hearing distance of the magic like qualities of this ancient material, as if I had become an ambassador for Paulo’s forest empire.  Yes, Paulo, your legacy is marching on, I carry it proudly every day and as the fates would have it I found myself advising one of the largest and most progressive donors in the world, who are really supportive of our work – and enabled your vision to go really far.

We return to Portugal tomorrow, where you appear in just about every picture, in every part of the building and gardening process.  You are as much part of our land there as we are and as you planted half the trees you will grow on with us there.  Quite fitting really, as Paulo was many parts elfen creature and part-man.  He seemed more at home in a mossy corner between rocks or high in the canopy of some tree.  A quiver full of carved arrows over his back and slightly pointed ears would have raised no alarm.  I’d find him stuffing fresh cut grass into his blender, together with powder of some coco bean, sun-filtered water and some fruits. I asked him if he had become part-goat; he looked at me from under his eyebrows, frowning, to say “grass and weeds are just phenomenal mineral accumulators, how do you think sheep survive?”.  I’d settle down with my all-too-human scrambled egg and bread, feeling more like an ork beside this ethereal being sipping his plant juice. (Annoyingly, he would then carry a jug of this stuff around for the next half hour, like an IV, sipping, glowing). 

I’m going to feel a bit lost for a while – any time I had a problem or an idea I’d take it to you and you’d send me a drop-box full of vids and docs and links and names and case studies.  I have Gigabytes of the stuff now, guess I’ll have to start reading it…  God-damn that malarial piece of shit bug…

Ruth, I can’t imagine how you’re coping. You are SO many times stronger than me to have held it together so long.  Please come and see us whenever you can – we are here with you as your extended family. 

Go well Paolo, my friend, it’s been a great privilege to fly together a while.  

Ground-breaking solar energy system (?)

What do we know about solar energy? What do you think of? 

PV (photovoltaic) panels that produce electricity come to mind, or solar thermal  systems that give bath-loads of hot water for anyone who has installed them.

Then there's concentrated solar power, of which there's a nice photo and description from wikipedia here. Basically these are huge rows of curved (parabolic) mirrors that reflect sunlight to a static tank of water or oil throughout the day.  The heat generated creates steam to drive a turbine to make electricity.  

I thought that was as far as we had gone with solar systems, until I came across this radically different concept they call the Sun-Pulse.  Invented by the German physicist and inventor, Jurgen Kleinwachter, it has been built and tested in Tamera since 2008.  So, here's how it works: 

- solar energy in the form of sunlight is collected in pipes erected on a structure (in their case a greenhouse but it could be flat panels on a roof, or a series of parabolic mirrors beaming the light at a centralised tank, just like in the concentrated solar power system);

- vegetable oil is the selected medium to be heated because it has a boiling point far higher than water, so it can be heated to over 150 degrees C or higher (can't remember exactly, doesn't matter right now).  

- the veg oil is allowed to circulate around a Stirling Engine.  OK this in itself is a wonderful invention and concept all by itself - invented in 1813 by a Scotsman!  Basically it's an engine that runs on the temperature difference between two points.  There are two pistons that are driven up and down as gas is expanded when heat is applied to the "hot end" of the engine. Cold water is pumped to the cold end to maintain the temperature difference.  The pistons move and drive a flywheel, which can be connected to a generator to make electricity, or a pump to move water, or a tank to hold compressed air, and so on.  Again wikipedia has the basics here. 

Now, the beauty of this system we visited in Tamera was its simplicity despite the complex design and mechanics.  We were shown around by Douglas Baillie and Janos Valder, both seriously competent scientist-technicians in their own right. Douglas comes with a PHD in physics from Heriot Watt University in Scotland, which speaks for itself. 

Douglas beside the stirling engine. The insulated pipes carry the hot oil to and from the stirling engine. The
circular fly wheel on the right is rotated as the engine runs. 

 Douglas explained that all this was built on a fairly low budget, using recycled metal and basic membranes.  

Nikita, right, researching for his essay...

Inside the greenhouse Douglas explains how the "Fresnel" mirrors direct sunlight to the copper
pipes that carry the oil. 

The stirling engine here powers a 2.5KW electrical generator, but the system can do so much more, including: 

-  circulation of hot oil to a kitchen area to cook food

-  compress air for running tools

-  mechanical energy to run rotational tools or for milling, etc. 

Here's a video that explains the whole set up in 9 minutes

Later I was in touch with Jurgen (the inventor) who has started to work with a company in Germany to produce smaller, more efficient system. Jurgen explained that they have started to use the pumping capacity to capture air, remove the nitrogen to create oxygen in tanks which can then be used for welding. He is also confident that the heat can be used to run heat pumps that could run fridges. Imagine the possibilities: the capacity to create cooling in hot climates. Ice for cold stores, vaccination programmes, storing food and so on. 

Solar water pumping, Stirling-style

Next we were introduced to the Sun-Pulse Water. This is based on a similar principle: solar heat is collected in a basic dish (see photo) which runs a stirling engine, itself connected directly to a water pump.  

The team say the calculated pumping capacity for this puppy is a whopping 400,000 litres per day at negligible head, up to 80,000 litres / day from 10m depth and 15,000 l/day from 50m - in a site that has around 2,000 sunshine hours per year (in other words, forget most of the UK).

This is serious stuff. In Pakistan last year there were lakes of standing water for 7 months after a flood, inundating a massive area, as far as my eye could see in some places.  Diesel driven dewatering pumps were used but local authorities quickly ran out of money for fuel so the impact was limited.  Could this thing really move that much water in a day? (4m litres in ten days of sunshine). If so, bring-it-on...

Janos, standing beside the Sun-Pulse Water engine / pump - built with a few spare parts
bits of motorbike, some old metal and sticky back reflective foil. 

Economic analysis and comparison

The question now is to compare the costs of construction and operation against other solar or renewable energy systems.  Take your average rural village in Pakistan where the electricity supply is utterly unreliable: on average, people receive only around 4 to 6 hours per day - for which they pay around $7 per month per family.  In a village of 100 households that's around $40,000 spent over five years.  With rampant inflation that's likely to be closer to $60,000 in five years.  And remember, that's for just a few hours of power per day.  

In most villages people use this power for a bit of light, charging mobile phones and fans for the extreme heat (well over 45 degrees C for about half the year). 

So, let's assume that the community decides to apply for a micro-finance loan to erect an alternative power supply.  Their options are limited to solar PV, which would be quite expensive, and would be limited to the provision of electricity (12v or 240v if an expensive and energy-hungry inverter were bought). 

If a sun-pulse were installed, it could, potentially, provide adequate electrical power but also mechanical energy for pumping water, driving machines to allow for a vast range of micro livelihoods and, as discussed, cooling for food processing, storage etc.

That's in theory.  Now we need to put it into practice.  Our plan is to write a research proposal whereby Jurgen, Tamera and a local NGO in Pakistan would team up with a local university and a local community to build a test system. 

Funding is going to be needed to kick-start this whole process.  Training in system construction and design could take place in Tamera and later in-country, technical support and guidance from Jurgen and his colleagues in Germany and implementation, testing and research carried out in the community in Pakistan.  

The question of capital investment is really critical for this or any other energy project. I've been inspired by the work of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh which pioneered a system of providing loans to landless poor in that country.  Then they stared Grameen Shakti, which is promoting solar PV energy systems to rural poor on a credit basis, with massive ambition to reach 15 million people by 2015.  Surely something like this could work in Pakistan and other countries to allow poor communities to access the money they are going to pay anyway over the coming years for electricity and other energy services.  

So that's the idea.  Now we have to see if it's feasible - and to find out if the Sun-Pulse offers better economics that solar photovoltaic power for people out there struggling with serious energy insecurity.  

How to reverse desertification

Last month Nikita and I visited Tamera in the far South of Portugal -  a parched landscape of rolling hills, rolling fields once dedicated to intensive wheat production, then intensive grazing, now exhausted and denuded.  In their wisdom the Government with EU funding has introduced mono-culture eucylptus and pine plantations, which will exacerbate the water crisis in this area, increasing fire risk and bring virtually no sustainable economic opportunities to local communities.  

We came to see an alternative land-use option.  To learn how you can turn this into an area of perpetual productivity and an oasis for biodiversity.

It looks like this - for mile upon mile (this photo taken on the adjacent watershed / valley to Tamera, so it shows how it would have looked like before the project began.

Annual rainfall here: about 600mm - about half the amount of Northern Portugal or the UK

We arrive mid-afternoon and are immediately shown around by Cristophe a graduate of forestry from Germany; he is passionate about their project and completely familiar with each aspect of its design and implementation which makes for a brilliant walk-through and presentation.  And the best thing was learning about it all as we walked the land and learned physically what we were hearing.  Being there makes such a difference.

So their plan is simple: establish dams across the valley in as many places as you can. This means getting diggers down there and increasing the depth of the valley a bit and using all this material to form the dam.  This one shown above is their newest lake - only a year old - filled by just the winter and spring rains.  In the foreground you can see a solar pump that moves some of this water uphill further for vegetable production.

Move a few meters to the left and this is what you see. The road sits on the top of the damn. The water on the left of the picture is part of the next dam further down.  Cristophe explained that the dams hold the water, plenty of it infiltrates into the ground, but once it is saturated it slowly spreads to the surrounding land.  

Without these dams all this water would have run through the valley and away to the sea.  The parched earth would remain dry.

Cristophe explaining the design of one of their older lakes, this one five years old I think..

Incredibly detailed planning went into the underwater design as well - shallow areas for reeds for fish breeding and other wildlife, a deep section in the middle to increase overall volume and to maintain some cold water sections, some "shelves" or terraces for various other biodiversity benefits.  

At ground level they have planted thousands of trees. At first there are fruit, nut and other deciduous species, close to the water, followed by a terrace about 3 or 4 meters wide, then another band of trees, then another area of veg production.  

This photo shows the stages of tree plantations, only five years on. There's a new veg bed on the terrace between them which does need some irrigation during the long dry months, but the trees benefit from the increased water available in the water table. 

Think back to the first picture - arid, brown, dry and denuded landscape. THis looks (and feels) more like France or Southern England. It is much cooler with all the shade and water around, and they say that the lakes create increased breeze down the valley as well.  

Nice to see that some beds were dedicated to seed production only.
I haven't seen this kind of thing before - vegetables all allowed to go to seed
and get on with securing their reproduction

7 years on, trees now well established creating their own micro-climate,
all possible because of the water that is now retained for longer time by the dams. 

Finally - a reminder of how this land looked before they started here.  I walked up here the day after our tour and couldn't help seeing all the little valleys and creeks that could be dammed up to create zones of regeneration and biodiversity.  

And then imagine what it could transform in some really arid countries where people suffer constant food insecurity, droughts, floods.  Here is a design alternative that could solve all those problems. 

Tamera is about much more than this.  For more info see their website here