EWB

I am in Boulder, Colorado, after a long day of visits and presentations on renewable, alternative, sustainable energy and humanitarian engineering. It has been interesting but also a lot of information download. We landed at Denver yesterday, drove to Golden, checked into a hotel and immediately began our learning group discussions and activities. By the time, we called it a night, it was way after 10 and I was tired. But sleep eluded to my utter annoyance and disbelief. How could it be? I should be sound asleep.

It was snowing lightly when we arrived in Denver and a bit more in Golden. After a restless night of tossing, the sight of snow dusted mountains rimming the town and trees covered with pretty clumps of snow was strangely calming. Despite the snow, it was not too cold. We drove to the Colorado School of Mines where we toured the fuel cell and geology labs and learned about humanitarian engineering and the university's many faceted alternative energy research over lunch. Then off to NREL where unfortunately, my documents were not submitted so not being a citizen, I was not allowed on the tour of the grounds. Alone in the visitor center, I spent two quiet hours in the exhibit area reading all about the research into solar, hydro, goethermal, biofuel, biomass and house designs that capture or avoid heat depending on seasons and latitudes. Then the group came back and we sat through several more hours of talks on the subjects where I struggled to keep my sleep deprived mind from recklessly dropping my head on the table.

Then off to Boulder where we checked into this century old hotel that looked so small from the outside but had a skywalk inside that linked to another much bigger part of the hotel. Very interesting old America style architecture - stained glass ceiling, flowered wallpaper everywhere, old Victorian style furniture, a 100-year old manned elevator and beautiful courtyard. Over dinner, we had a very inspiring talk from a professor from the local university who has been a leader of Engineers without Borders in the US since 1997. He talked about how he got into working with third world countries, and showed us all the different projects he and his students had done to help make life more bearable for poor people in so many different parts of the world. French American, he did not seem very interesting at first when we first sat down to dinner but his talk was the best event of the entire trip so far. The engineers and professors we had met all day long all talked about projects of grand scales to reduce carbon emissions, greenhouse gases and find alternative sources of energy to feed ever increasing demands of a world grown used to more and more power hungry growth. And now here was this professor who spends three months of his year, working with his students on small engineering projects of $800, $1000 or $15000 on a century old pumping system that America had long forgotten that uses potential energy from a 7-foot waterfall to bring water to a village so a little girl could go to school instead of fetching water all day long from a nearby stream, putting in equipment in a school in Nepal where the smiles on the kids' faces as they gazed into a donated computer could light up the universe, digging 300 feet wells into an acquifier away from an existing contaminated well helped ensured kids who traditionally would not be named till they were 6 because most never lived to 5 could grow up healthy, putting in school programs in Palestine and Israel so kids would be busy learning instead of throwing rocks at each other, setting up programs to bring vocational skills to children at risk in Africa so they could earn a living... And he gave us the talk in a most unassuming, humorous way, pleading almost for the people who earn $1 a day and whose daily concern was to live another day. And his message was so profound - our schools don't teach engineers on the interaction of health, social interactions, economics and engineering so that the things we build in the less developed countries are appropriate and sustainable. And there is so much to do because UN and Unicef statistics tell us there is so much poverty, malnutrition and death each day from totally un-necessary and totally avoidable causes. Meanwhile the world spends $31,000 a second on arms.

My problems all seem so small now. Tomorrow, more activities and then home.