How Nicaraguan Villagers Built Their Own Electric Grid
21st April 2015
On a dirt road high in Nicaragua’s northern mountains, a small knot of men and two precocious young boys uncoil electrical cable from the back of a pickup truck. Other workers swing machetes at overhanging tree branches. Along the cleared shoulder of the road, another crew tightens a cable on a freshly planted utility pole.
Verdant coffee plantations line the steep road, punctuated by wooden shacks where pigs orbit stakes in the mud. Placards on outhouses proclaim the names of aid organizations. Cinder-block evangelical churches mark even the tiniest clusters of homes.
This extension of the power grid will serve about 30 families in the San Ramón valley, about 200 kilometers northeast of Managua. “We’ve always lived in the dark here,” says Salvador Gonzáles, a resident of the valley and one of the men volunteering on the line crew. For him, the arrival of electricity means a refrigerator and a leap in quality of life. “I’ll have my soda cold, some chicken, some meat, a Popsicle,” he says.
And the SWPL cry goes ’round the clubs: ‘Oh noes! They’ corrupting these innocent primitive people with – gasp – technology!’