stories-from-nina-blog - Tumblr blog

[stories-from-nina-blog]

how i found my job, and how i find it now

Before I left for India last June, I thought back on a brief period of existential crisis that I’d had over one thing: ALL OF MY FRIENDS HAD (or seemed to have) JOBS IN THE BAG. Oh, the abject humiliation of being asked “sooo, what’s your next step?” and time after time, having to answer “oh, I’m still looking.” Well, after spending four years in classrooms that didn’t satisfy me and trudging to oil-dominated job fairs that crushed my soul, I chose to put my foot down. No more job searching until I came back from India two months later. (Here’s a senior photo where I’m acting this saga out, ha).

Sure enough, since I only knew how to find traditional engineering jobs, it was like hunting for a unicorn (they might exist, right?). I swear to you, I sat at my laptop for 12 hours a day sometimes: scraping the Internet, setting up calls and meetings, and tossing my resume into the dark abyss of online applications. You don’t find a dream job without furious, extensive research and an almost unreasonable level of dedication, and even then it may not happen within the timeline you’ve set. (PS: don’t forget to take breaks, eat, exercise and sleep. Please. I’m not condoning unhealthy behaviors!!).

And one day in late September, I’m sitting at my desk and I find it. A job posting for a fellowship at a non-profit solar startup in DC. I open this posting--it’s a Word document, not an automated application site--and I think I see my immediate life goals reflecting back at me. A technical background, with interest and experience in project management? Check. Experience in clean energy project development and research? Check. Ready to impact energy inequality issues in local communities? Check. 

The list went on and on. And the moment I could compose myself and read through the whole document, I knew that this opportunity was meant for me to find. (Is this what it’s like to meet your soulmate?)

And here’s the best part: I applied, and I kept applying for other positions, and I didn’t even hear back until a month later. But by the end of November, I had signed a contract for this wholesome, community-oriented opportunity that met all my criteria and more. After four years of searching, I finally found what I’d been looking for, and it already felt like home.

Yeah, you see that White House in the background? No, it’s not easy to do  social and environmental work during the Trump administration. But that’s exactly why we do it: to pave the way for a future where it’s commonplace.

Side note, so you know what I do: 

At Groundswell, I work with a strong team of brilliant minds and good people committed to improving energy inequality and resiliency in American communities. In DC and Maryland, we partner with churches, schools, and other strongholds in the city to install sizable solar arrays and distribute a large amount of energy to low-to-moderate income families at no cost to them. 

I heard it but I didn’t fully get it until two months ago, when a coworker of mine mentioned a powerful thought on why he does what he does. Here’s what he told me: there are people in this city that have to decide between paying their electricity bill or their water bill each month.

WHOA. Can you even imagine that? Having to decide between water and power? Man, I sat there in my seat for a good 15 minutes just thinking about the gravity of this statement. Someone across 16th Street from me could be suffering from this dilemma every day. And as it gets consistently hotter in our cities, how do people afford to cool their homes when they’re already in this predicament to begin with? What happens if their water shuts off in the summertime, or they can’t afford heating in the winter?

Whoa. 

The recognition of my blessings hit me right in the soul that day. If we can bring people affordable energy, we're saving lives and livelihoods right in our own communities. Thank God I chose to do the work that I do.

On top of this, as the intensity and frequency of natural disasters pick up, we’re also partnering with local churches to establish resiliency hubs. This is an awesome concept: a resiliency hub is essentially an emergency shelter for the community, but it also incorporates solar energy and battery storage for backup power. The solar systems on these churches distribute energy to regular energy customers throughout the year, but in the event of a weather or civic emergency, the attached battery storage system acts like a short-term generator, providing clean power to those taking refuge in the hub.

^THIS is some of the most directly proactive work I’ve ever heard of, especially regarding community-led preparation for climate disasters. It’s been five months since I started at Groundswell, and I’m beyond grateful that I get to be a part of this. By the way: welcome to my workspace where the magic happens.

This time, I’ll keep it short:

COUNT YA BLESSINGS, AND NEVER FORGET TO GIVE BACK!!!

[stories-from-nina-blog]

the week the sky cried: hurricane harvey.

After that summer, I got back from India where there had been NO rain, just in time for another catastrophe of an entirely opposite nature: Hurricane Harvey. The rains literally piled up. Water doesn’t “pile up”: it flows, or permeates soil, or something. But not this time.

See, Houston may have been suited to manage this storm better if our wetlands hadn’t all been turned into pavement. Wetlands are these swampy, grassy, incredibly rich ecosystems (if you’ve driven over to Galveston or through Floridian marshes, you’ll know what I’m talking about). Nature designed them to buffer changes in climate fluctuation, to protect against flooding and erosion, and to be natural water filters. They’re also home to many beautiful creatures. (Learn more from the Galveston Bay Foundation here).

The problem? Houston’s climate may be naturally suited for flood management, but the city itself is definitely not; what was once a wetland habitat has long been paved over. So with nowhere to flow or to soak into, the water did what water does, and it simply sat in the container into which it was poured. Nobody was ready for that. My family’s home is in a Houston suburb, and we watched with utter fear as the water crept up to our doorstep within two days. I have never seen rainfall like this where I live. Neighborhoods around us had mandatory evacuations because the levee nearby was predicted to overflow and flood our area. After spending days glued to meteorology sites and posting frantic updates on Facebook and Twitter, we all sighed with relief as the graphs monitoring the water level of the river plateaued and then, as if by a miracle, began to decrease.

Many parts of our area and Houston proper were not so lucky. We had friends who were evacuated by boat when the water levels rose up to their apartment windows. Many lost their homes completely; we helped rip out drywall, salvaged keepsakes, talked to older Houstonians down the street who had poured decades of life into their homes and now had to find a new plan in their seventies. If this was the experience in fairly well-off areas of town, I can’t even imagine what it was like for other parts where the infrastructure was even older and even more precarious. Also, Houston received plenty of media coverage. What about Puerto Rico, where the government pretended until last week that the death toll from Hurricane Maria was only 64? The updated death toll of 4600+ was discovered by a team from Harvard because they cared to gather this information by immersing themselves in Puerto Rican communities. If they hadn’t cared, would anyone else have even thought to do that work?

The solidarity that Houston exhibited in the wake of this storm is awe-inspiring, but the catastrophe could have been prevented with intelligent design. We should use that solidarity and that lesson to design and plan proactively, for and with our communities. A city of pavement can’t manage storms, and the first to hurt are those in lower-income communities with aging, fragile infrastructure.

Additionally - are we thinking adequately about climate and ecological justice for other living beings? Our destruction of natural habitats creates holocausts among sensitive plant and animal communities. I’ll tell a story on this another time.

[stories-from-nina-blog]

two words: waste thanni.

My friends and I were in the very south of India in the village community of Packiyanathapuram (Pnpuram for short). We were beginning to facilitate construction of an educational center which we’d designed and planned with community contacts over the past nine months. (By the way, here’s the link to our in-country blog and our past fundraising page). A significant part of the village economy relied on agriculture, a livelihood made possible for generations past because of dependable monsoons (seasons that bring in replenishing rains). In recent years, however, climate change has caused harsh drought across South India during the typical monsoon seasons. This unreliability on the rains has injured and fragmented local economies and communities, but we didn’t start to notice this deep damage until a few days in. Upon learning from people we trusted in the village, we were able to make important modifications to our building that we wouldn’t have otherwise considered.

While there are endless stories I want to tell about our time here, I’ll start with one that revolves around water.

June 9, 2017.

The eight of us had been in the village for less than a week and the sun already had gone to work on our American skin. In stark contrast, the kids of this community were small and sinewy and strong, always ready for fun with quick, brightly shining grins.

Following a rousing game of kabaddi (like Red Rover with 100 times the aggression), a good twenty-five kids grabbed our hands and took us on a walk past the banana fields. Three boys decided to show off on the way there, and we all watched in awe as they shimmied twenty feet up a tree with unbelievable dexterity. Up at the top, they grabbed unripe mangoes and tossed them down for us to snack on. The first of our team to receive a mango, Anna unscrewed the top of her Nalgene bottle and poured a small amount of water onto the fruit to wash it. Jenny, a mature and welcoming girl with an enviably thick braid of hair down her back, watched this disapprovingly and clicked her tongue. “Waste thanni,”  she said. You’re wasting water.

Mildly confused, I didn’t fully comprehend the weight of her words until we reached  Looking into it, we saw a deep, near-empty stone chasm. Renis, a smaller boy of few words, missed no opportunity to display his incredible athleticism. Without any hesitation, he clambered at least thirty feet down a rope and swam for a minute with the large catfish-like animals in the water at the bottom of one well. He seemed so tiny and faraway. While the others goaded him on, I looked away and focused on the massive well. A short set of stairs was built down the inside wall, clearly designed assuming that the lowest water level would normally be just fifteen feet below the lip of the well. It was as if a person was meant to simply walk down a bit and reach the water’s surface. Without the seasonal monsoons for replenishment, the stairs seemed to float in mid-air as Renis swam in the shallow dregs 30 feet below, a poignant piece of the climate crisis. Had they not told me this was a well, I wouldn’t have ever known.

(above, the three tree-climbers do flips into a small catchment that’s half-full. I’m not sure of this water’s source - maybe groundwater?)

Sharon, one of the only fluent English speakers, clarified this scene for me - he  solemnly told me that it hadn’t rained for two months. Each afternoon, I would see two boys riding a scooter into the village lugging a few five-gallon jugs of water. Thangaraj, a short, well-built young man who shied away from speaking English, always drove the scooter with a jug between his legs while Alvin, a kind and funny boy of fourteen, sat behind him hanging onto two more. This was everyone’s drinking water for the day. The boys purchased water jugs from a central facility because the wells just weren’t providing anymore. In this community, water is a precious good. Whenever someone shared their water with me, the first thing I felt was guilt and the second was deep gratitude. And what I would think was: I waste thanni at home. When did I become so out of touch, so complacent? Here, I feel wasteful to use more than half a bucket of water to bathe. How much do I blindly waste when I shower in America? Our cities aren’t quite as green as they claim to be.

On top of this, I was initially afraid that because of my Indian background, I might face more scrutiny as that American girl. But my hesitations quickly disappeared. Once our faces became familiar, mothers ushered us inside with their kids, always offering tea and biscuits. With food acting as the olive branch, we eventually had conversations about everything from caste restrictions to educational barriers to climate concerns. While my team and I all knew that we wanted to “connect with the community”, actually building those relationships changed my perceptions as we connected over challenges that mattered to us together, not as “us and them”, but as a collective people.

Here’s my question to engineers, developers, and policy makers:

Do you design for and with communities in mind? Do you put yourself in the shoes of your neighbors, working with them to think about their homes especially as climate change influences our global communities? Because our team earnestly tried to, and yet we couldn’t do this fully until we really immersed ourselves in the community and shared deep connections and conversations. We need to give ourselves the avenues to empathize deeply and with urgency, because until that happens, the “solutions” we develop in the face of climate change are only temporary.

And yes, I still remember the names of all of these kids!

[stories-from-nina-blog]

family.

July 2017.

It’s smaller than I remember from ten years ago, but relief washes over me as I take the small steps up--one, two, three--onto the veranda in front of the house. I look around. Familiar cushions sit on benches outside the door, and I instantly re-evaluate: Hmm, it’s smaller but it’s also cozier. My aunt and uncles are walking up the steps behind me. I turn around, facing out towards the brightest, greenest mountains I’ve ever known. It’s been ten years since I’ve seen this view, and the aliveness of it all washes over me like fresh air. 

The porch is made of cement painted dark red, always cool to the touch. I step through the doorway and into a home of familiar smells: the mild earthiness of fabrics dampened by cool humidity; the delicious smoke from a woodfire burning out back to heat the bathwater; and the earthiness and spices of a well-used kitchen. To my left is the living room. My favorite pastimes have always been to pore through the stash of National Geographic magazines from the 1940′s and to look at pictures from my mom’s childhood. 

Before I can pick up a photo, Uncle Manu reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a stash of cinnamon candies. “Sweets?” he offers, as he does nearly every time I see him. Oh, he knows he has a sweet tooth, but he always insists that he can eat them because his blood sugar levels are miraculously low. I consider the offer. We just took a hike to look at how the coffee berries are coming along, so that was a workout, right? And I found one of those creepy leeches on my leg so that constitutes some blood loss... I could probably use a sugar boost. “Of course, Uncle Manu!” I grin and grab one, timing it just wrong enough for my grandmother to catch us eating candy before dinner.

Dinner smells delicious. Minus the chicken and chapati, it’s mostly vegetables: spinach with dill, some other unknown but equally flavorful greens, and drumsticks. Several of these are grown right outside the house. We mill around the table for a bit, then sit down for dinner and say a blessing before digging in. I pick up a drumstick and chomp into it, scraping the edible parts of the vegetable out of its fibrous exterior. My tastebuds immediately burst with the flavors of home. Dad would loveee these. We pass jars of pickle around and the conversation flows easily, filled with stories... and suddenly Aunty Karen points out with a grin that Grandma has avoided the vegetables. Grandma smiles sheepishly and tries to protest. Aunty Karen turns to me, and I recognize the mischief in her eyes: it’s story time! “Nishhh, did you know that Grandma hates vegetables?” What? I’m absolutely beside myself. Grandmothers can hate vegetables? My life is a lie. This is like that time in second grade when I found out that my teacher didn’t live at school. “No, I had no clue... how did you even find that out?”

Aunty Karen’s grin grows wider. “Well,” she says, “your grandma would always serve us plennnty of vegetables when we were small. She almost never had any on her own plate.” One corner of Grandma’s mouth turns upwards and she begins to smile as Aunty Karen goes on. “So, we thought she was making sure we were all well-fed... but she was just passing all the vegetables off to us!!!” Mind. Blown. Eyes wide and jaw dropped to the floor, I look in Grandma’s direction to verify. She sees me and starts laughing, protesting even less convincingly - the rest of the table devolves into howls of laughter. 

We clean up and go back out to the veranda like we always do, where it’s now nighttime. Uncle Manu sits in his standard chair, getting ready to tell his famous stories, and Grandma pours us tiny glasses of wine she made herself from the grapes we grow several kilometers away. As I watch everyone graciously thank her with a smile, for a second I recognize my mom in each of them.

My family has always been connected to the earth. When we would visit South India in my childhood days, one of my greatest joys was spending time on my grandparents' coffee and pepper estate, nestled deep in the forested mountains of Karnataka. In the evenings, we would always sit on the veranda and gaze out upon a distant expanse of tall, green hillsides, made gauzy and soon indistinguishable from the sky as twilight faded into a pitch black night.

Decades ago, my grandparents owned this land together. My great-grandfather had bought this land and cultivated it from scratch, and his son--my grandfather--intended to keep managing the estate. But life often shows us how fragile our plans are: just a few years later, he passed away out of the blue, leaving my grandmother on her own in a man’s world. 

With six children below the age of 13 and no work experience, Grandma decided to learn to run the business. Everything about her speaks of incredible perseverance. Even when pressured beyond reason as a woman and a single mother to just give up, that was never a choice. With the support of good family and friends, Grandma taught herself how to manage accounts, understand the agriculture, and continue employing people to work the land, sending her children to boarding school several hours away for a strong education though she must have wanted them by her side more than anything.

When I went back to visit this beautiful estate in July, it was just as I remembered except that the drought had reduced the crop yield some. To my inexperienced eyes, it didn’t seem too bad. On the drive back to the city with my uncle, he told me that the droughts had been so brutal in the last few years that several other families had to close down their estates and vineyards. I looked out the window at the fields around me and saw that his words were truth. Have you ever seen entire groves of coconut trees dry and withered like skeletons in the sun? It’s a true blessing that our family’s land is still providing.

A deeply symbolic home for my family, this estate provided beautiful memories for my mom, aunts, and uncles, but it also gave them the resources to build careers and lives that aren't so dependent on a now-changing climate. What about our neighbors, near and far, that aren’t so lucky?

[stories-from-nina-blog]

HΔME

home:  (n) the social unit formed by a family living together; (n) of, relating to, or being a place of residence, place of origin, or base of operations; (v) to a vital, sensitive core (”the truth struck home”)  - Merriam-Webster

hΔme: as the world changes socially, culturally, and environmentally, inevitably, so do our homes

------------------------------------------- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  -  -  -  -

If climate justice is the puzzle, then the pieces are our world’s communities of the past, present, and future; and the answer is the collaboration of our hands, hearts, and minds working together to solve it.

------------------------------------------- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  -  -  -  -

I grew up playing with roly-polies, raising monarch butterflies in school, conserving water and turning off lights when I wasn’t using them, and always being in awe of trees. It hurt me deeply to see them cut down and it still does: I find them stoic, like horses, and I can’t believe that we dare to tread on and devalue lives just because they don’t look like us, act like us, or speak like us.

I chose civil engineering in university in order to affect causes that were environmental and community-oriented in nature, but this was apparently very idealistic, which was made especially clear to me at school job fairs. I attended one of the largest universities in Texas, and we were largely funded by oil and gas interests (albeit very unevenly among the different colleges, and students received a tiny fraction of that funding directly). So naturally, when the local industries are “fossil-fueled”, the primary technical job opportunities are -- you guessed it -- fossil-fueled.

So I hardly felt at home in those classrooms until I found friends who cared about similar things, and we set out to do a project in South India that truly aimed to empower a Tamilian community in times of environmental hardship. In this village and in this experience, I found a home.

Then, I rediscovered the people and places I’d missed for so, so long: my family in India. There, I found out that a resilient connection to the earth is in my own heritage.

From there, I traveled back home to Houston right in time for Hurricane Harvey, a storm of unprecedented intensity that hurt and damaged so many Southern US communities. In the aftermath, Texans bore witness to both crushing difficulty and incredible resilience.

And within months, I found myself here in DC -- my newest home -- working at a solar non-profit that bridges my engineering background with community empowerment, the importance of relationships, and strong environmental stewardship. 

Exactly one year after graduation, let me weave for you a story of these places and people that I’ve called home in the last year - and how they each tie back to my big-picture fight for climate change and environmental justice.

[I could have made this easier for myself and focused on one piece of the story, but you know me: I believe in context, and these hands and this mind won’t rest until I solve this puzzle. ]