Just two weeks ago the biodigester project had been going great. We had three working biodigesters (one shown in Figure 1), I was finally feeling comfortable with my role in the project, and we even were receiving some good press about the project.

And then it happened. Within two days, two of the three working biodigesters broke. I was told that one of them had developed a crack in the water box that is used to collect the gas, so I anticipated a small fix was required. However when I went to the site, I realized that our problem was bigger than anticipated.

The water box, which should sit upside down in the brick biodigester had fallen over on its side, and there was a large hole in the center where the center pipe had torn threw the water box (Figure 2). After a little bit of work we were able to pull the water box out of the slurry and clean it off. While the hole was big, it certainly could be repaired.

If it was just one biodigester that broke, I could have chalked it up to chance. But two days later I went to another biodigester and they told me that their water box had also developed a crack. Thus all the gas escaped, and they were left without a functioning stove. The crack at this biodigester was less significant, but it still needed to be fixed.

At the MCC meeting last Monday we decided to stop all work on the biodigester project until we could figure out what the problem was. I was especially frustrated by this problem and what it meant for my work. I was the one people looked to for answers on this project, and now I had none. "But you're a mechanical engineer. Aren't you supposed to know how to design stuff," is what I'm sure people were thinking. Yes, I did study mechanical engineering for two years, but this problem was much bigger than anything I had ever tackled in my classes.

I had an incredibly frustrating Monday and Tuesday of this last week bearing the weight of this failing project, and not knowing what to do about it. Fortunately, by Wednesday I realized that other people too were taking responsibility for the project and looking for solutions. And now we were able to go back to the basics of this project and attempt to design something with sound principles in mind. Instead of just implementing a design we had taken from someone else, we were beginning to brainstorm a better system.

On Friday I went to look at two other biodigester designs: one different than ours, and another where we had gotten our design. The visits gave us some great insights as to why our biodigesters broke. In the biodigester similar to ours, the builder had used a metal pipe in the center with a thick plastic pipe around it. In our first three biodigesters, we only used a thin plastic pipe filled with cement. This pipe would bend easily, and the forces on the water box would greatly increase (Figure 3). I noticed this problem in our biodigesters, and began using a metal pipe protected by a plastic pipe in our more recent designs.

So the question now is, what to do about the broken biodigesters? Do we remove nearly 5000 liters of manure slurry from the biodigesters and replace the center pipe with a stronger pipe? Or do we find another method to support them which won't involve the removal of all the manure?

In the end, I think we are going to end up with much better biodigesters because of these two failures. I think that's the price of learning. You have to fail to find out what works. It's just that sometimes that failure hurts.

Figure 1. A working biodigester in the community of Boa Sorte.

Figure 2. The same biodigester in Boa Sorte after failure of the water box. The center pipe remained intact.

Figure 3. Biodigester in the community of Balanca. Notice the degree to which the plastic center pipe is bent.

I recently heard a Brazilian joke. It went a little something like this:

An American, a Frenchman, and a Brazilian were all riding in a low-flying airplane. After a while, the Frenchman stuck his hand out the window and then announced, "We're over Paris right now." The other two were amazed. "How did you know?" they asked. "I felt the Eiffel Tower as we flew by," he said.

Later, the American stuck his hand out the window, and announced that they were now flying over New York. The Frenchman and the Brazilian were also amazed by this. "How did you know?" "I felt the Statue of Liberty as we flew by," the American said.

A little while later, the Brazilian stuck his hand out the window of the plane and then proclaimed that they must be flying above Rio de Janeiro at that moment. The American and Frenchman were impressed, but they asked, "Did you feel the Christ the Redeemer Statue?" "No," the Brazilian said. "When I stuck my hand out the window, someone stole my watch."

Of course the joke is meant to be funny, but it also points out a real problem in parts of Brazil: crime. I got another first-hand look at this part of Brazil last Friday.

I was in Recife for the quarterly MCC meetings, and Mike and I decided we would go to a large festival in Old Recife for the birthday of the city. We had talked about going with Marcelo, another MCCer, but he didn't show up before we left. We also had a short discussion about whether to take the bus or an MCC car, and we ended up using the car.

We got to downtown Recife and found a place to park. In this part of the city it's common for someone to help you find a parking spot and then also watch your car during the evening to make sure it doesn't get tampered with. After parking, the guy watching our car asked for R$10. The night before I had paid R$5 parking in almost the same area. And I thought it was a bit odd paying before he had watched our car for us. But I had heard that if you don't pay these people, sometimes they will actually damage your car. I decided to play it safe and pay the R$10 up front.

After a great open-air concert near the beach, Mike and I headed back to our car. We noticed that the lock had been broken off, and that all the doors were open. However, nothing was taken. About five minutes later we saw Marcelo, and he said that his car had also been broken into, and they stole his stereo. We found the police and pretty soon we realized that close to ten cars had been broken into that night. The only reason nothing was taken from our car was that we didn't have a stereo system.

Two other people who had met us at the concert told us that we should never park in the location we did, never pay up front, and never pay more than $R3. That's good to know now, but it would have helped a lot to know beforehand.

I was pretty frustrated by the whole situation. I've been to downtown Recife probably only six or seven times in my life, and two times someone has tried to steal something from me. That doesn't seem like a very good batting average to me.

In the end, no unfixable damage was done to me or the car, so I have to feel lucky. But I felt very glad when I got to come back to Monteiro on Sunday. At least here I can park where I want for free.

After spending 18 years in formal education, I had hoped that I would have learned what I wanted to do with my life. But, like many of my peers, I had been struggling with identify a passion, a desire, a calling. I have come to Brazil for many reasons, but one of them was to allow me to think about my calling while not being overwhelmed with schoolwork.

This past week I went to a meeting with two of the other MCCers in a community about an hour and a half from Monteiro. This meeting was to discuss all different aspects of life in the community. Do they have enough water, what can they do about it? Do the children have enough opportunities? What crops could be produced for profit here? They even considered opportunities for poets and musicians to be a concern in this community. While it was an interesting subject, the shear magnitude of the meeting (more than 6 hours) tired me out. At the end of the meeting, I was ready to go home.

But MCCer Orlando told me that he wanted me to meet Zé Branco, a poet from this community. I told him my name was Joel, that I was from the U.S., and that I'm here in Brazil working on biodigesters. I explained that biodigesters convert manure from cattle into cooking gas. After the introduction, he decided that he would write a poem/song about me.

I'm unable to accurately describe the type of music; I think this music only exists in this part of the world. But he started singing with a voice reminiscent of an auctioneer, but slower. The melody was one of controlled wailing, never wandering far from the original tone.

Unfortunately, I was only able to catch bits and pieces of the words. He wrote the song from my point of view, and at one point he said, "Eu nasci para chamar gado na capital do Sertão." Literally translated, this means, "I was born to call cattle in the capital of the Sertão." (The Sertão is a name for this region of the country in the Northeast). So I had hoped that this year in Brazil I would discover my "calling." Perhaps Zé Branco is right; I have a cattle-caller calling.