June 28, 2008
It´s 5:00am and I am waking up symphony of rooster, dogs, little children screaming, and loud Spanish radio shows coming from every direction in the neighborhood. The first week here these were startling sounds in the morning, but now I´m becoming more accustomed to the everyday noises of living in the country. Usually my morning routine involves a run through the community and a quick bucket shower before breakfast. However, yesterday morning was a little different due the amount of time we spent trying to retrieve the family cat from the roof. After a half hour of unsuccessful coercion, we brought in Matt Wills who came to save the day and retrieve the cat. Only in Nicaragua does your morning start late because the family cat is stuck on the roof.
The morning would not have been complete without the bowl of fresh fruit and the Nicaraguan coffee with Maria and the kids in the morning before class. I continue exchanging English words with Marvin (7) and Masiel (9) we’ve made it through numbers and animals and are moving to phrases “Good Morning” and “Good Night.” It’s adorable to hear the kids speaking English and then giggling after every phrase. More recently Cherling (3) has been joining. Her favorite word is “coffee.” No wonder we get along so well!
The walk to the Solar Center is one of the best parts of the day. We walk along the dirt road among a sea of children wearing white blouses and navy blue pants or skirt. Every night before bed, Marvin and Masiel iron their clothes and polish their shoes. It is really important for the children to be well put together for school. The walk among the kids is filled with stares and giggles. The kids are adorable and I can’t get enough. Along with happy Spanish speaking children, we also pass by countless chickens, cows, pigs, and other farm animals around every corner. The other day we dodged a stampede of four horses by jumping to the right side of the road. Never a dull moment. The greeting used in Nicaragua when passing is “Adios” and is used at every opportunity. I can’t think of a better walk to work in the morning.
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June 28, 2008
Oh, Nicaragua– with its own climate and language, also comes its own pace. And try as foreigners might, it simply is unsurmountable. In the past few days, I’ve been reminded over and over that there is one pace: slow. And I can’t do anything to speed it up. Everything one does is confronted with a problem, and this problem’s solution will present another problem. Four hours need to be allotted for everything that we think should take one. But, I’m adjusting again, accepting the facts and setting my goals accordingly.
The weekend was a good opportunity to get reacquainted with the lifestyle– how to shower, get ready, speak, sleep– pretty important things for survival, let alone success. The week was full of learning and progress. Calibration for testing has begun, we are exploring in-country support contacts, and we even began computer classes. Fridays at 3:00pm we teach computer classes for a small fee to whoever wants to learn. Yesterday, we had six teachers and seven computers, and it was a huge success!
- Lori
June 25, 2008
By Kris Berggren, National Catholic Reporter, NCRonline.org
Cover Story Published: May 30, 2008
You might call University of Dayton senior Lori Hanna an accidental entrepreneur. The mechanical engineering major recently won the $10,000 top award in the University of Dayton’s business plan competition for her project to build portable solar-powered medical equipment sterilizers.
Her project has blossomed into a nonprofit technology assistance company, Salud del Sol, whose first business, producing a sun-powered medical sterilization device, could be a tremendous boon to health-care providers in remote rural communities.
“I’ve never worked with anything business-related before,” said Hanna. “It has gotten so much bigger than I thought it would be, but it’s so exciting.”
Pictured above: Lori Hanna roasts coffee beans with her host sister, Vanessa, in Sabana Grande, Nicaragua.
June 23, 2008
These are photos of Sabana Grande, Nicaragua. Click on any image for an enlarged view.
June 22, 2008
In 2006, Lori Hanna, Executive Director of Salud del Sol, lived in Sabana Grande, Nicaragua for two months with a family who had no running water or electricity. Her experience with the University of Dayton engineering service-learning program ETHOS left her with a vision for safer medical care to help address one of their needs. Thus was born the vision behind the company she helped to found.
June 21, 2008
I’m moving up the world of water carrying from the well, I made the trip back yesterday with a dry t-shirt. Either I’m finally getting a better grip on life here, or carrying less water in the bucket is working in my favor. Learning the language has been on the upswing as well. My pronunciation is still a little off with most words, but our Spanish teacher gave us a “tongue twister” to practice the rr’s, which are my weakness,
rr con rr cigarro
rr con rr barril
que rapido corren los
carros por el ferro carril
After 4 weeks of working and studying in Sabana Grande, I had the opportunity to take a trip w
ith the other volunteers to Granada, a colonial city 45 minutes south east of Managua. The trip was fantastic. We spent 3 days and 3 nights in this Colonial city, staying at “Hotel Oasis” a backpacker’s hostel in the city. The heart of the city was filled with brightly colored buildings, a lively Central Park, and streets full of vendors. To the east, the city was lined with Volcanoes and south is the Lago Cocibolca, the largest lake in Nicaragua. The city was the perfect combination of beautiful landscape and tourist attractions.
We spent the days exploring the city, renting bikes, which was great fun for the first few hours, and then they all broke, and swinging through trees on the Mombaco Canopy Tour, which included the sound effects of howler monkeys! We began the morning with a 45 minute off road ride in a Land Cruise through the dense Coffee farms to the heart of the forest in Granada. One of my goals while being here is to visit a coffee farm, and so far this is as close as I’ve gotten! Although the entire city was picteresque, the most beautiful scenerey was watching the sunset from the top Iglesia Merced.
June 21, 2008
I safely arrived in Nicaragua without a glitch. My Spanish is picking up quicker than I thought it would, so I´m excited about that… or maybe everyone here just knows I´m slow so speaks slowly 
Wednesday night, I stayed with some nuns… they were so sweet, from Mexico, and they have a pretty nice place to stay. Vince and Don Luis picked me up from the airport, and Vince and I went on Thursday to a meeting about the Autoclave. It never actually happened… miscommunication I guess. But Susan told me that the students at the Engineering University (called the UNI) working on the autoclave have made some progress on the pressure model. They will send me more information soon, since they missed the meeting.
I didn´t quite have on my ¨adventure hat¨ soon enough. Thursday for lunch, we ate duck feet. I was still working on having an open mind again, so that was a bit too soon… haha. I ate it, but it was difficult!
June 21, 2008
Phew. Once again, so much has happened, and I feel that I don´t have enough space to describe everything.
Granada is the #1 tourist destination in Nicaragua. After being there, it´s easy to see why. It is a gorgeous city with an almost european feel. The buildings are all different bright colors, made of of adobe, with markets all in the streets. Parks and courtyards are littered everywhere. The city itself overlooks Lake Managua, which I believe is the second largest lake in Central America.
It is also the only lake in the world with real, legitimate sharks in it. They are bull sharks, fierce creatures that adapted to the fresh water back when the lake fed into the ocean. They were, and sometimes still are, such an epidemic that people do not swim in the lake whatsoever. Anyway, kind of a cool fact.
The city is abundant with hostels, where many other student backpackers stay and form a kind of dormitory atmosphere. Vince had joined us from Managua, and we all stayed in a dorm at Hostel Oasis. This was easily the best choice for a place to stay, and I think I payed about $40 for 3 nights, breakfast every morning, and beverages all day. Complete with real showers and bathrooms too! It had a garden/courtyard, which had at least 6 really comfortable hammocks hung throughout. In a second courtyard, sourounded by trees and the clouds (or stars) above was a really, really refreshing pool. I expect to be tagged in pictures on facebook, because I have none myself… and I need them.
June 18, 2008
These are photos of the contruction of the el Centro Solar (Solar Center) in Sabana Grande, Nicaragua. Click on image for an enlarged view.
June 18, 2008
Well, I’m leaving… on a jet plane I’ve had some last-minute packing dilemmas. Everything worked out except the temperature-sensing material for testing. Per the recommendation of my dad, I’m not bringing it with me. I’m hoping they can mail it down, and that will hopefully be easier than getting a customs attorney and all of the steps that would have been necessary to take it on the plane. We don’t need the whole 55 lb bag of it, so I contemplated putting a little bit in a tupperware container… but then decided I probably wouldn’t make it out of the airport if I tried to transport a container of strange powder with a label taped to it!
My emotions have been across the scale today, so thank you to those of you who put up with that! It has been a productive and wonderful time at home, making it very hard to leave. However, I am very excited to see the progress the team has made in Nicaragua and join them!
Thanks for checking up on me!
-Lori