Our German volunteer buddy, Martin, lived with one of the poorest families in Sabana Grande. He lived with a middle-aged single mother, Dona Elia, and her 12 year old daughter, Alba Rosa. They were a little bit off from the main pathway of Sabana Grande and none of the houses on their path have electricity, except for Mauro, one of our solar panel experts and more recently Dona Ilda and her family of 12, who just got their own solar electric system a few weeks ago. All the other volunteers knew that Martin had it rough. He was the only one with a true dirt floor, the only one who had no form of modern lighting, and even more unfortunately he lived with the consensus-worst cook of all the Mujeres Solares. This was on top of all the discomforts that the rest of us deal with also.
To Martin’s credit, he stuck it out for the whole 5 months. He knew it was rough, but that is what life is really like for the poorest of poor, and the last thing he wanted to do was move because he was uncomfortable and deny Elia the $50 a month income he was providing. Martin made the best of it and kept a smile on his face. However, he did take the opportunity to escape when he could. He came over and watched corny telenovelas with us and our family every evening. When he wasn’t with us he would go over to Noel’s place and plug in to his outlet so he could use the computer. Martin watched our house for us while we were away in the states for a week. It was convenient for him because he could enjoy the lights, electricity, and even watch DVD’s on our laptop. It was convenient for us because he enjoyed it so much that he would stay nearly all night, which kept away the critters and mischievous neighbors. As a thank you Jenny and I brought back a LED crank lantern for Martin, which was a God-send for him.
As hard as it was for Martin to live with Elia and Alba Rosa for five months, I could imagine how hard it is for Elia and Alba Rosa to live like that their whole lives. Martin decided he wanted to do something really special for his family before he returned to Germany. He was working on a project with a Canadian group who ordered a bunch of tiny five watt solar panels to assemble into small LED home lighting systems for some of the rural families in Nicaragua who don’t have lights. Martin was able to convince his business partners to donate a system to Grupo Fenix. When he asked Elia if he could install a small lighting system in her house she told him it was her dream.
On Martin’s second to last day in Sabana Grande I got the honor to help him install the novel little solar lighting system. Martin purchased all the supplies with his own money and we installed the five watt solar panel and three LED lighting fixtures, which combined only consume 500 mA off a 15 volt battery, thats only seven and a half watts! Go look at one of our incandescent bulbs to see how many watts it consumes and you will understand what seven and a half watts means. Along with the lights we also put in a seven amp-hour battery, which allows all three lights to stay lit for nine hours continuously with no input from the panel. Needless to say it was a pretty rewarding way to spend the day. It was especially nice that I got to lend a hand because Elia and Alba Rosa are the ones who gave us our kitten, Virginia. They have three grown cats and who just had six more adorable kittens!
