Dispatches
Central America Expedition 2010: Day 13 – AsoFenix, Nicaragua
March 29, 2010
We rose bright and early for our trip into rural Nicaragua with AsoFenix. Seth and Sarah Hays, volunteers on a three-year assignment with AsoFenix through the Mennonite Central Committee, picked us up at the AsoFenix office together with the organization’s founder and director Jaime Muñoz, and off we went into the countryside northeast of Managua. After about an hour and a half we stopped for a breakfast of eggs, rice, beans, tortillas, and extremely salty cheese at a café in the central park of Teustepe, the town where Seth and Sarah live. As we were eating Jaime explained how AsoFenix grew out of his realization that there was a need to develop renewable energy in the Nicaraguan countryside and practically apply the results of academic research to local communities. From this initial goal has come a broader focus of helping rural families improve their quality of life through renewable energy and associated projects to address other issues.
AsoFenix’s first project was a solar-powered pumping system that brings potable water to the community of Candelaria, which we would be visiting the following day. First, however, we were headed to Malacatoya, another rural community where AsoFenix had set up a hydropower turbine to generate electricity for families who previously had had none. Another couple of hours past Teustepe we parked at the base of a dirt track that led up a hill and past some of the houses of the far-flung community.
Together with Pablo Bravo, a local resident trained as a technician for the turbine, and Orlando Castellón, the coordinator of the local committee which oversees the project, we trekked up the hill, though the fields, and down some very steep and rocky paths, before finally crossing a river to the small building that housed the turbine. Pablo and Jaime explained how the turbine works: water enters and fills the small cups on the wheel; the weight of the water in the cups spins the wheel, generating electricity. The turbine generates approximately nine kilowatts per day, which is more than enough to supply the 29 households of the community with electricity. The electricity is mostly used for lighting homes, although some of it is used on coffee plantations.
On our way back to the van we stopped in at Pablo’s house, where we interviewed his wife, Irma Martín. She told us that life is much better now that she has electricity. Before, she couldn’t work except during daylight hours, and her house was always full of smoke from burning gas. Now, she said, it’s much easier to keep her home clean. Also, her children are now able to do their homework at night. Before electricity, they had to use a candle and couldn’t both study at the same time. Nicaragua is the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, after Haiti, and hearing Irma speak about the difference electricity has made in her life was a profound reminder of the importance of things those of us from wealthier countries take for granted.
