The Urban Biogas Project (formerly Rot2Roti)

                                                  Alex Schmidt                                                 

                India is a different place.  Example:  It was my 2^nd day in New Delhi, and I was on my way to my first meeting with a biogas expert.  We spend a few minutes negotiating a price with the local auto-rickshaw driver (which can be much more difficult than it sounds) and then we jump in.  This puts our very lives at the hand of the driver as we navigate the traffic of a developing country, where traffic laws are more like suggestions.  I enjoy it. My teammate Zach say’s, “A rickshaw ride is like an hour long rollercoaster ride”. Our driver stops (at what is obviously not our destination) and begins to chat with a local.  I came to learn that he was actually asking for directions!  It turns out we had been traveling in the opposite direction and arrived 45 min late to our meeting, but we have already been learning that India runs on a different time.  45 min late is nothing, we are escorted to an office and given tea and biscuits, and wait another 45 until the biogas expert arrives and we begin our meeting.

                After a week in Delhi (and a month for my 2 US teammates Zach and Mark), three teammates and I (pictured below), travel down to Bangalore for the ACARA Summer Institute.  After being on the ground here, we realized our business needed to pivot in a new direction. The Summer Institute was the perfect place to step back and look at our model with fresh eyes, and be challenged by Julian, Fred and Brian.  After decisions were made, Harmeet and I headed back to New Delhi to complete the work need before I return.

                Like we had hoped, even though biogas has been around for decades in India, there are still new initiatives and opportunity.  For example, I just read an article on a huge project in New Delhi to use biogas technology to convert sewage to compressed gas to power part of the massive public bus system.  Click here to read it.  As for our project, we are making the necessary connections to build a plant including APMC (governing body of the market), Teri TEAM process, S&S Biofuel Consultants, and others.

                Personally, I would not say it has been easy.  There were many challenges I had to overcome here.  But in spite of it, I have seen opportunity in industry and hope in the people to overcome the challenges of this developing nation.  I am very grateful for the opportunity to be in India.  Thank you to ACARA, everyone involved in the ACARA Challenge, and our outside funder for believing in us.

               

Our team at a flower and produce market where waste was composted to organic fertilizer: Alex, Nitya, Zach, Harmeet (From left to right). Flower waste smells a lot better than produce waste!

Organic waste at Azadpur market being transported to the landfill.

The Cost

Serving the poor comes at a cost.  I’m not just talking about the plane ticket.  I’ve been learning so much about suffering in the past year, and I knew God was preparing me for something. Well now I get the privilege of experiencing it! 

It’s hard to blog about some things when you know your mom is going to read it.  There are some things that mom’s just shouldn’t/don’t need to hear.  So I’ll take this time to remind her that worrying can do absolutely nothing (Matthew 6:25-34, as Jesus puts it, “Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?”), and that I’m doing much better now.

I hit the ground running in New Delhi.  My partners on the project, Zach and Mark, had been here for about a month before me, and it was his last week here so I went with on all his adventures (and our project work).  It included touring biogas plants, meetings with experts and our Indian teammates (Nitya and Harmeet), shopping for suitcases, and custom tailored suits for about $200.  All of the running around (and probably some bad street food) lead to something fierce in my belly.

In short, puke, fever, and I went through all of the underwear I brought in one night.  It was pretty bad for about 5 days (the rest of my time in Delhi, before going to Bangalore).

I later came to find out I lost weight one morning when I buttoned my pants and synched up the belt past the worn, usual hole, to a new one.  I don’t think I’ve changed belt size in 5 years. 

God seriously just pulled me through, as I could hardly remember parts of this verse that were sustaining me.  I had no desire to try and find it in my bible when I was sick.  All I could remember of what it said was: for I do not count the sufferings of this present age… and then something about not even caring about it.  I was close: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”  Romans 8:18.  For whatever pain and discomfort I was in, it is just a piece of the puzzle to advancing the Gospel and helping the poor; a small cost considering those who have gone before me.

I was feeling much better when it was time for our train ride to Bangalore for the 2 week class we were taking on social business ventures (business ideas with the objective of helping people in need).  The 42 hour train ride was awesome:

Prayer requests:

- Thanks for getting better, and continued health and strength (the heat takes alot out of you!)
- The monsoon would come, and cool it down!
- A heart for the Indian people
- Our project and the meetings we will be having
- Continued safety

Where to Sleep in Schiphol?

I could tell India was going to be an adventure, before ever arriving. 
My dad is a retired pilot.  This sole fact has created unimaginable blessings for me to travel to the corners of the earth, for a fraction of the cost, including Europe, Jamaica (yeah, mon), Tanzania, Israel, Uganda, and now India.  The one catch is that there has to been an open seat on the plan, it’s called standby.  All my life I’ve had no problem this… until Israel (but that’s a different story. The short: got onto the jetway and escorted off a moment later, 3 days, 2 nights trying to catch flights at 2am and 4am).

I can’t say this trip was as bad as that, but it’s comparable, and more interesting.  I got to Schiphol International Airport, Amsterdam no problem.  My plan was to catch a Mumbai flight and then take a flight I had purchased to Bangalore. So I show up to the 10am flight.

Trying to keep this short, I didn’t make that flight.  In fact, I come to find a guy who has been in Schiphol for 3 day’s trying to get the Mumbai flight (there is one Mumbai flight a day).  This is no good.  To my surprise the Delta desk was very helpful to me and I exhausted every possible option, all to no avail.  Mumbai flight was my only choice, and it didn’t look good.  Air India’s pilots have been on strike, and that was overloading all of the other flights to India.

I checked my email (at 6 euro’s for a half an hour) and it turns out my team wants me to come to Delhi, instead of Bangalore.  This is normally not a problem for standby, but I had bought a ticket from Mumbai to Bangalore.  After many foreign phone calls it looks like I’ll be arriving in Mumbai at 1am and purchasing a ticket to Delhi from there.

Herein begins my 24 hours in the airport.  You get board, you know? So I hope this is entertaining:

WHERE TO SLEEP IN SCHIPHOL?

The airport's open 24 hours, but it’s too bad the ‘rest chairs’ are not comfortable to sleep in.  So I embarked on a mission to find a better place to sleep.

This looks like a promising location, but it’s in the open, bright, and noisy…

let see what else we can find.

 This guy didn't mind sleeping in the internet cafe, and handy use of a stool!

 Well, he looks friendly.

 Lame!

 Nope.

Stupid dividers.

Close...

Yep. That'll do.

By God’s grace we somehow did catch the flight to Mumbai the next day (although many didn’t). 

I land at about midnight, get out of customs and get directed left to the domestic flights.  It’s a little eerie part of the third world airport, where no one but me was walking.  I walk to the end where there is an armed guard, who is paid to look tough, and doesn’t speak much English.  He asks for my flight papers.  Shoot. I switched my flights.  I couldn’t print any tickets in the airport, and I hadn’t bought one yet, anyway.  I debate with him for a long time, and he hesitantly makes some phone calls and motions for me to sit.

Crap.  Well at least I’ll be able to talk to someone, just as long as they don’t hold me here all night.  After some time, he motions for me to get up, and he lets me through to a bus outside that I get on.  I’m still sketched out at this point, sitting in a dark bus, but after a few minutes other people start boarding, and I realize this is a normal thing.  It drives us to the terminal where we exit the airport.

Well, now I need to actually have to find a ticket. I was told I could buy one at the airport for cheaper then reserving it online, but now it’s 1am and I’m outside of the airport.  I find the entrance to which there is security, and God pulls through again, as there are ticket counters outside of the entrance.  I book a 6am flight, and go outside to soak up India in this courtyard night, and try to stay awake.  I would have booked a super cheep hostel, but my traveling nurse had just told me an awful unnerving experience she had trying to find a hotel late at the Mumbai airport, so I opted out.

I land in Delhi at 8am (day 3) and finally I’m there.  Well, almost.  I had an address and was told to find a prepaid taxi. Done. I gave the driver my written address, and we are off (after he hot wire’s his cab to start it!).  When we seem to be getting close, the driver gets out a few times and asks for directions (I will come to realize this is common). That didn’t lead anywhere, so he asks for a phone number, which I give him. Turns out we end up at the TERI University (not my guest-house) but I’m relieved non-the-less.

The TERI guest house manager comes out and he did not know I was coming, and said there were not any rooms available.  Shoot, I guess no one informed him I made the switch to come to Delhi first either.  But it wasn’t long until he found his boss who treated me to breakfast and could call my teammates to meet me. 
Whew. What a start.  That's just how India works.

Why are you going to India?

Intro to Alex in India

                As I sat in my first day of a class I thought ‘sounded cool’ called Design for Sustainable Development at the University of Minnesota, I couldn’t have imagined that it would lead to where I am sitting right now. 

 I mean, the professors told me that it could have happened, but our team needed to win the so called ACARA Challenge and to (what sounded to me like) solve world hunger.  Yeah, right.  A few weeks into the program we couldn’t plan a group meeting, much less develop a business solution to solve poverty in India.

                Well, I’m writing this because I’m sitting in a guest house in New Delhi, India to further a project, not to solve world hunger, but hopefully supply some green, cheap cooking fuel to people who make the equivalent of 1 or 2 US dollars a day.   Here is a quick video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ6EUnUmUE4

                I will be In India until July 22 to answer one question:  Will this work?  If yes, then we/I would come back to the US find investors, and hopefully set up plans to return to India and build a biogas plant.

                But starting a biogas business to help the poor is only the start.  Spiritually, India is in great need.   In a society that is built heavily on a domineering caste system, India is 74% Hindu, 15% Muslim and 6% Christian.

                I really look forward to getting involved in a Church/ministry during my time here to learn about how the Gospel is moving here.  I’m just starting to get a feel for what it is like spiritually here, and what people believe. Please pray for my relationships with my teammates, friends and business contacts here.

There is so much to share, but I first wanted to just give a little intro!  More to come about my travels and adventures soon.

Motherly Longings (um... not my motherly longings)

To all of my lady friends who want to be, but are not yet mothers:

Mother’s day was just a week ago, and I was listening to what Matt Chandler preached on that day.  He mentioned something about mother’s day and it made me think of multiple single lady friends that I have. It blew my mind.

Chandler said that since he has become a pastor, he has found that mother’s day isn’t always happiness, chocolates and roses.  Many non-mothers struggle with mother’s day because of their longing and waiting to care for a family is not yet fulfilled.  There is a profound idea in scripture that I hope will bring great encouragement.

Take it back to the start of human kind.  Adam was charged to name all of the animals under the sun.  He did, but he never really found any of them to be that intimate friend he needed (sorry dog lovers).  Thus, God creates the woman.  

Okay, so later Adam specifically names Eve: Genesis 3:20 “And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.” What? That’s interesting, notice that she is called the 'mother of all living', but she isn’t actually a mother yet.  We see this because a few verses later she has Cain: Genesis 4:1 “Now Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived and bore Cain...” (insert biblical sex joke).  So, get this, Eve was called a mother before she had any kids.

This has profound implications.  Women were created to be mothers, even if they don’t have kids.  How can this be? Here is a simple example: My friend and I lead 2 groups of teenagers in a discipleship/leadership camp last summer.  Within a few days, both groups started to call my friend “mom”.  I wondered why this happened.  She hadn’t been overly ‘motherly’ to either of the groups, and it’s not like these high-schoolers were missing their moms. 

It’s simple, girls are natural mothers.  If you find yourself wanting to be a mom, you don’t have to keep carrying that burden and waiting.  Start to be a mom now.  Find kids (or peers for that matter) in the church, in the family of Christ, and care for them; take them under your wing… and, you know, those other motherly things that I don’t know much about – do them!  There are plenty of orphans around you every day, many of whom physically have parents around, but not spiritually or emotionally.  You, like Eve, are already the mother of someone who needs you.  Find them, and love them!

(Find Matt Chandlers sermon at the Village Church podcast on 5/13/12)