Update from Nicaragua

Its Nicaraguan Revolutionary day here on the 19th commemorating when the Sandinistas took Managua, overthrowing the US backed regime in 1979. Now the national holiday shuts down most businesses and busses flood into Managua for speeches from the President Daniel Ortega and his wife, the Vice President, Rosario Murillo. 

Moving on however, the bureaucracy involved with our project continues to frustrate. I worked here last summer as well in a more commercial, purely private sector investment driven role and encountered some of the same issues but now working directly with different government entities the paperwork and approvals are stifling. As our project hopes to develop a training facility in conjunction with a university built out of the project I worked on last summer, you would think the government would be all for such private/public collaboration that would help their universities but we have to deal with questions over when these students are paid who gets that revenue and items like that. Much less focus on how this project could be scaled and help increase the human capital in the renewable energy sector, something almost nonexistent today.  Nonetheless, it has progressed, just not at the pace we had certainly hoped for and by the time I return to the US, I'm quite certain I won't see its completion unfortunately.