The Alchemists

As some of you may already know, a principal goal for our three week extension of this trip was to create a biogas digester for the cave-dwelling bedouin community of Ghwein, in the Southern Hebron Governate. Earlier in the abroad, we had spent a day with this community learning about their lifestyle, eating wonderful food, and hearing about the difficulties of living traditionally under the occupation. This day prompted our desire to give back. That same day, we briefly visited another small community, Suseya, where Adrian had helped Yair Teller to install a biogas digester a few weeks earlier. This project gave us the idea of spreading this proven system to the people of Ghwein. We have been spending some time setting up all the contacts, primarily with the biogas wizard Yair Teller, and our Hebron contact Nayef Hashlamoun. Through our work with these two individuals, we hope to see this project come to fruition.

After a week of emails and phone conversations, we set a tentative schedule for our project. Tuesday we were to travel to Ghwein, joined by Nayef as our local contact and translator to the cave dweller community. Nayef Hashlamoun is a retired photojournalist who worked for Reuters for many years. He now runs a small organic farm on his property, and is the full-time president of the Alwatan Center; a community center in downtown Hebron. Yair Teller is a graduate of the Arava Institute in southern Israel, which specializes in environmental issues, and is the only campus which has Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian, and International students. After graduation, Yair started the small company Ecogas to provide biogas digesters to communities in the West Bank. Through email, Yair provided us with a list of supplies needed to create the biogas digesters, and we planned to collect these materials on Wednesday in Hebron with Nayef's help. Thursday will be spent building the biodigester with Nayef and Yair's help.

Tuesday started slow and rainy. Difficulties at the rental car agency and with directions meant that we arrived to Hebron in the early afternoon. We met up with Nayef at the Alwatan Center downtown and followed him to his house to visit the organic farm and discuss our exploratory trip to Ghwein. After the obligatory chai, we set out in the afternoon light, grateful that the rain had lifted. We spent the drive to Ghwein questioning Nayef about the possibilities of this project and learned that he had two site recommendations for implementation. The first site, slightly up the road from Ghwein was a small family farm and Women's community center. The second, a family of 13 within Ghwein itself. The next 4 hours, we spent trying to deliberate the most effective site to implement this system. It was not easy. Though we ended up content with our decision, Adrian and I had difficulty choosing between these two sites because this system would be excellent for both sites.

who could begrudge empathy and aid to children like this?  

The process of making the decision was influenced by many factors. We wanted to implement this project in the place of greatest need, but also trying to be mindful of the opportunity for this system to naturally spread in the area through adoption. Both sites met the necessary input criteria: an abundance of sheep and goat manure, wastewater, and eager participants. Our biggest sticking point came from the possible outcomes of the two sites. The first site had a great location close to the highway, and the women's center there would allow for the greatest exposure to the community. We had a personal connection with the second site from our earlier visit. With its remote location and destitute inhabitants, this site definitely had the greatest need. Our qualms centered on deciding between serving the greatest need or promoting the technology to the widest possible audience.

We visited the women's center first and established that this site would be perfect for a biogas digester system. We were so content with this decision, we almost decided to move ahead with the project there without even visiting the other community. This site was perfect! We were confident that the project would take root and spread with an abundance of the needed inputs, a need for the gas and fertilizer, and willing participants. We elected to scope the other site just to be sure. The need for aid was felt very strongly in the second community. After a short while we began feeling uneasy This second family could barely afford to buy gas and certainly had an abundance of manure and wastewater, but due to the more arid conditions there seemed to be no agriculture. With the output of excellent fertilizer seemingly going unused, we were hesitant to subscribe to the biogas digester as the answer to their needs. We slowly learned that the family did have plans for a vegetable patch and herb garden for their personal use in the near future, and the sludgy fertilizer which flows from a biodigester would fit this project excellently.

members from the two different families survey a biogas digester in Suseya.

Still unsure of our final decision, we decided to take members from these two communities with us to visit Suseya to see the project's impact on the families there. This instantly created a very lively discussion of the project between the family who had been living with a bio digester for around two months, and the two prospective families. Community building of this sort was another focal point for our project. We wanted this project to foster communities of cooperation between families with biogas, instilling knowledge and experience within families which is transferred to new adopters of the technology.

After many hours of conversation and too many cups of tea to count, we headed home to Bethlehem still deliberating where to implement our project.

Tune in next time for the exciting conclusion to... The Alchemists!

Bustan Qaraaqa!

I wish we spent more time at as a full abroad group at Bustan Qaraaqa. This excellent permaculture farm is nestled in a valley on the outskirts of Beit Sahour and embodies many of my favorite characteristics. The farm also operates as a guest house, but the times we ended up staying there we never payed. Travelers from around the world visit here, intent on learning permaculture strategies from Tom, the gregarious farmer/ inkeeper/ professor who keeps this place humming. We visited on a Thursday afternoon and didn't end up leaving until early Friday morning.

A long tour of the premises with Tom revealed more than meets the eye. To the casual viewer, the farm looks almost lackadaisical, mostly native plants and trees planted in the wadi at varying distances from each other, piles of empty beer and wine bottles along the path to the composting toilet, and cats everywhere. Through Tom's eyes however, I see projects! Here a contiguous canopy of forest cover, creating shade and enriching the farmland for the next generation of plants to grow, there a bottle-walled greenhouse/ shower room/ kitchen/laundry, and the cats, a family of strays much like the wayward travelers who come for a short visit and find themselves beguiled by the wonder that is Bustan Qaraaqa.

This colorful and smell-free composting toilet was a pleasure to use!

The compost toilets were some of the nicest I've seen, clean and not smelly in the slightest. Tom uses the “humanure” to plant trees and other shade bearing nitrogen fixers, but mentioned that he would be willing to use the humus for growing foods as well. “Compost toilets make me feel like an alchemist” Tom said, “taking the most base of materials and transmuting it into black gold, the freshest, richest soil I have ever seen!” I agree completely. It is time for us to stop this open chain of consumption of resources and production of waste and close that loop. Permaculture states that “Waste is energy in the wrong place” and this is no exception for human waste. The composting process produces incredible amounts of heat, (up to 80 degrees centigrade!) which kills all the human diseases and bacterias, rendering the soil completely inert and ready to produce excellent crops.

Other projects in the works included a pedal powered washing machine, sauna cave, aquaculture gardening, and some involved local tree plantings for West Bank bedouin families. The project is funded completely by donations and grants and does an immense amount of good in the area. To learn more or donate, visit BustanQaraaqa.org.

Volunteers are welcomed throughout the week, to take part in any of the multitudinous projects that the farm undertakes. We spent a Saturday demolishing some old concrete brick walls and digging out the area wherein the new bottle-walled greenhouse will be built. It was tiring work digging out the clay about 2 feet deep for the entire interior of the greenhouse. Though exhausting, it was rewarding work, especially seeing the excited look on Tom's face at the progress being made; Tom has been looking forward to this project for several years now so the groundbreaking was certainly a big step.

We continued to hang out with Tom and the Bustan crew for the rest of our time in Palestine getting into all sorts of mischief. Some even came down to help us South of Hebron with our biogas digester project which is the subject of my upcoming post entitled “The Alchemists”.

Harvesting the Sun Twice

Adrian and I decided that after all the excitement of traveling in the past frw days we would love a day off to just sit at a cafe and catch up on writing papers, emails, blogs and the like. We spent the morning lounging around Bethlehem, glad to be back in the West Bank, and happy to be able to put our bags in our apartment and home-base for the remainder of our trip. No longer weighed down by our heavy packs, we happily roamed the streets of Bethlehem picking up groceries and grabbing lunch at our favorite Falafel stand Afteem, all but in sight of the Nativity Church. We sat and wrote in Manger Square, passing the time, relieved to be stationary for once.

Adrian had received correspondence from a friend who invited us to a conference in Jerusalem at 5:30 entitled “Harvesting the Sun Twice”. Intrigued, we figured that we could just make it if we hurried to the bus stop. After a quick trip into Jerusalem, we called Adrian's friend for directions and struck out into West Jerusalem in search of the conference hall. We arrived around 45 minutes late, without an official invite, but our luck was still holding strong and we were let in with nary a second glance.

The conference was underway when we took our seats in the auditorium, but we quickly caught onto the gist of the project being presented. The project involved using thin-film photovoltaics, basically clear plastic which uses some of the available light to create electricity, and lets the rest of the light through. The project was examining the usage of these thin-film PV cells on greenhouses in Israel, Palestine, and Jordan as a possible replacement to the plastic roof coverings that are traditionally used on the region's many greenhouses. Although these technologies only provide for about 5% of the electricity of silicon PV cells, the ability to grow plants underneath with no noticeable disruption of growth is akin to “Harvesting the Sun twice!” If this technology is cheap enough, I am excited about the possibilities that it could bring to this region in terms of electrical independence.

If the product can provide electricity as well as crops for the farmer on the same piece of land it could do wonders for the farming population. There are still many questions to be answered, namely cost, durability, and reliability, but it is an idea which utilizes an infrastructure that is already built, and improves upon it.

After our journeys and the excitement of hands on building with Noam, this conference was a bit blasé in comparison, but still an excellent use of our time which would have otherwise been squandered roaming the internet or something.

Our next adventure takes place on a permaculture farm in Beit Sahour, a suburb of Bethlehem. Stay tuned for... BUSTAN QARAAQA!!!!