by Helen Cristina Gomes dos Reis
17th of August 2017
The last field trips were on August 17 and 18, a research group composed of: Professor Alessandro, Augusto, Helen, Lucas, Marenice and Nei from the Federal University of Amazonas. They were accompanied by Liane of the Sustainable Amazon Foundation (FAS) and Joana, an environmental engineering graduate, a trainee at FAS participated as a volunteer.
The day was favourable for travel, with no rain forecast and the sky was very sunny, which allowed no delays in leaving the Marina of David. The research group left the Marina at 8:15 am going towards the Três Unidos community, which was used as the team base (overnight and food). We arrived at Três Unidos after an hour of travel by speedboat. After dropping the luggage off the team returned to the boat to travel 20 minutes to the community of Sao Tome.
The group arrived in the community in the morning and the first procedure was to look for the community leader, Professor Alessandro and Liane explained the project before asking permission to apply the questionnaires and fora tour of the community. Sao Tome is well organized, and the lands belong to the indigenous community. They had a diesel generator, however, a lightning storm burnt out the generator and residents had spent 3 months without electricity access.
The entrance of the community of Sao Tome (with written greetings in Portuguese and in the native indigenous language of the community).
São Tome community as seen from the Black River
After applying the questionnaires within the community (to collect social-economical-energetic data), the team went to the isolated houses far from the main village, to take photos and get the GPS coordinates. At the end of the morning, the project group returned to the Três Unidos community for lunch.
The group left the base at 2:00 pm for the Monte Sinai community, which is located 1 hour 45 minutes from Manaus. This community uses a diesel generator owned by the school to provide electricity, which runs 12 hours a day. Monte Sinai is a medium-sized community and has a school that serves students from neighbouring communities. The residents work with the fruit, pulp and fish trade. A common complaint is the absence of electricity for 24 hours. This makes it impossible to preserve fruit pulps and fish which could be sold in the city. There is also a lack of suitable water treatment, as such the school students frequently experience diarrhoea.
Monte Sinai as seen by the Black River
As with Sao Tome we applied the questionnaire, and had a tour by the community leader. In relation to Sao Tome, this community had more residents and we managed to interview 26% of the residents. The team completed the interviews and returned to the base at Três Unidos by the end of the day.
Interviews with residents at Monte Sinai
18th of August 2017
According to the schedule of project visits, the Arara community would be the first to be visited. However, due to the size of the community (too large to receive the pilot project) and the possibility of servicing the team base itself, it was decided to replace Arara by Três Unidos.
At 8:00 AM, the team started activities in the well organized Três Unidos community. It has two schools (one managed by the State of Amazonas and another by the City Hall of Manaus), a health centre that serves the neighbouring communities, including a room equipped for dental treatments. However, there is still no dental care due to the absence of good electrical power to connect the equipment. Residents have access to the school’s generator for energy access. The generator’s operating hours are 10 hours a day, with set times in the morning, afternoon and evening.
Municipal School of Três Unidos
Interview with dwellers at Três Unidos
At the end of the activities in the Três Unidos community the team went to lunch and in the afternoon the group returned to the Baixote community. On the first visit, in June, it was not possible to conduct the interviews due to time constraints (it was almost dusk and getting dangerous to navigate at night on the Rio Negro). Baixote is a medium-sized community which has two diesel generators. One generator is from the state school and the other is community owned. The residents make a monthly contribution to purchase diesel. On returning to Manaus, it was observed that more houses were being built in this community. Baixote is the closest community out of all 15 visited by the project.
Baixote community seen from the Rio Negro
The Baixote community marked the completion of the first stage of data collection fro the Star Energy project. The designed questionnaire was deployed in a total of 15 chosen communities. The team returned to Manaus on Friday afternoon (August 18).
The team during the first field work (June).
Returning to Manaus after the last day of visiting (August).