Los Calpules is a rural community in Ciudad Dario, Matagalpa, Nicaragua with no access to grid electricity. Residents are subsistence farmers who survive on an average of only $3 per day. Until now, the local clinic, which serves 1500 people from several surrounding towns, had no power for medical equipment or refrigerators to preserve life-saving vaccines.
When our group of volunteers first arrived at the community, everyone was hanging around the school. They were clearly interested in the big truckload of "cheles," as they call foreigners here, but they were pretty shy. We walked around and introduced ourselves, but most of the volunteers didn't speak very good Spanish, so there were a lot of awkward smiles and silences. Then the Power to the People staff started an icebreaker activity that involved people acting like elephants, rabbits and bowls of Jello. It turns out that rural Nicaraguans and city slickers from the United States both look equally ridiculous trying to look like Jello!
We spent three days there, living with the families in their simple, dirt-floor homes, showering with a bucket of cold water out back and eating delicious food that was mostly produced right there in their yards and farms. In that time, we worked together with local volunteers and technicians to install four solar electric systems. The systems will generate enough electricity to power the school; a battery-charging station for community members who use batteries to power their homes, saving them expensive trips into town; a refrigerator for vaccines; and lights for the clinic.
It was already getting dark on the last day as we were finishing up the systems, and the crowd around the school was growing as everyone waited for the celebration that was to follow. We made the last connections by the small round lights of our headlamps. Then, finally, we went live.
The transformation was amazing. One minute, it was pitch black for as far as you could see, and then all of a sudden light was pouring out of the school. The whole community let out a huge cheer and there were smiles on every face. A local musician had brought a speaker system, which he normally used for shows in the nearest town, and we all danced late into the Nicaraguan night (thats about 8pm in this village accustomed to going to sleep with the sun).
After the celebration party finished, I started walking across the field to the house I was staying in. When I turned and looked back, the school was this blaze of light in the middle of the darkness. Some of the community members were still hanging around outside the school, and everyone was still smiling.
Thanks to all of the GRID Alternatives volunteers who participated; to Power to the People for leading an incredible project; and to SunPower Corp., Toshiba, Trojan Battery, Jinko Solar and Goal Zero for their generous equipment donations. Heres to more opportunities to bring in the light in 2014!