Our trail through the bush in search of gravel.

After a day spent gathering data at the school, our team set out on a mission to find gravel. Mind you, this mission became necessary after weeks of trying to find a reasonably-priced and/or reasonably close option for stones to keep the grass around the solar system at bay. However, considering there are (reportedly) three different mining companies in the area, and some lonely looking piles of gravel on the side of the road–little rocks were surprisingly hard to find. So while we were in Sioma, we dropped in on what looked like the headquarters of a mining company where we met with a guy named Wilbur. Wilbur guarded the yard while no one was there working, and he didn’t know much about gravel supply, but he apparently knew the guy who knew the guy that did. We drove with Wilbur a ways to the mystery man’s hut, but that turned out to be a dead end. “No stones to sell” was the word from Wilbur’s man.

Next, we drove about 10 KM down past the “so fresh and so clean” tarmac road–a bumpy ride to say the least–looking for what turned out to me a nonexistent mining company that Wilbur had told us about. At that point, the day was nearly over and we still had no stones to speak of that weren’t ridiculously overpriced or attached to ludicrously high transportation costs. Still, hope remained that a better solution would magically fall into our laps.

That was when Mr. Amukena made it rain. We told him about the mining company nearby and the dead-end down past the tarmac. He’d never heard of our missing mining company, but he was sure we’d find something with a better guide. We headed down the same way, this time pulling up to a small cluster of houses displaying a sign that read: “Mr. Dr. Lubinda”.  We’d passed it on our way up the road previously, and we were happy we stopped this time around. Dr. Lubinda is everything you could possibly dream a wise, old African village leader to be.

When he heard about our mission, he lifted up a dusty walking stick–about as skinny as his weathered calfs, and started jabbing the air excitedly in the direction of our journey-to-be. Off we went on foot with Madame Komona (another teacher that had come along), Mr. Amukena, and Dr. Lubinda. After approximately 1 km we ran into a gaggle of women and children, where Dr. Lubinda brightly explained the hilarity of the three muzungu ducklings trailing behind him.

And then we were eight. With two new mission members, we turned a sharp right behind the Dr’s walking stick and headed straight into the bush. Admittedly, our small Standard Microgrid team was wondering more than a little bit where we were headed, but we somehow felt we could trust Dr. Lumbinda with our lives. “We will get our exercise today,” Madame Komona giggled.

Teacher Madame Komona (right) with Alyssa Ely of Standard Microgrid.

We eventually stumbled into what looked like a small camp site, and met the man we had come all this way to see: Billy Mbanga, “the stone crusher.”  Instead of a whole mining company, he was one man, but no matter. Mr. Amukena and Dr. Lubinda explained our business in the bush, and we took off again with Mbanga leading the way, and a feisty Mbanga Jr. trailing behind us throwing pebbles. After showing off some of the piles of his work and offering a price that turned out to be a tiny fraction of all our other quotes, the deal was made.

The lesson that day? If you want a good deal, go by foot with a big crew, and always bring a doctor with you.

Mbanga Jr sporting Brian’s sunglasses for the cool effect.

Mission accomplished!

It takes a long time to get to Sioma from Livingstone. About 5 hours by dusty Range Rover, and the trip is only that short because a Chinese mining company funded the total rebuild of a large road strip some six months ago. Before the new road, that same trip could have easily taken twice as long.

We arrived at Sioma High School on what just so happened to be Youth Day, and really weren’t sure what to expect. Some Zambian holidays are characterized by a happy absence from work and responsibilities, but Youth Day at Sioma is celebrated a little differently since nearly all the students live on campus.

After walking into the head office and meeting Mr. Amukena and Mr. Skate, two teachers here that wear multiple hats and teach multiple subjects, we were walked over to the main event of the day, which included lots of singing, dancing, and poetry by the students. They plopped us down at the front of the seating area while a choir of girls was just finishing up a beautiful hymn in Lozi, the local language. (Please note for your future trip to the Western Province of Zambia: properly reciting any word or phrase in Lozi, as a mzungu—name applied to non-Africans, brings a lot of laughter and satisfaction to whomever is listening.)

From there on out, every break between acts was filled with enthusiastic lip-syncing demonstrations to local auto-tune ditties. Then came the poetry. A small group of girls and boys moved dramatically across the lawn, shouting a direct address of hatred to HIV/AIDS. This was met with whooping excitement by the poets’ peers. (The startling fact is that more than half of these children will lose one or both parents to AIDS by the time they finish high school.) If that doesn’t put into perspective how hard these kids work to get here, or how significant a proper chance is to them and their families, then nothing will.

Three traditional dances later–which included a “witch hunting” dance with impressive solitary shoulder dancing, and an eye-popping all-female dance circle infiltrated with just one small and very talented hip-shaking boy–we got back to work. First came a tour of the campus, guided by Mr. Amukena and the school’s Head Boy and Head Girl. You might be familiar with the terms and responsibilities of Head Boys and Girls if you’ve read Harry Potter. After all, Zambia was colonized by the British from the late 1800s until gaining independence in 1964, so words like “prefect” and “bugger” are common on school grounds.

Our mission on campus for the day centered around getting some final numbers on the system site location, and data logging the energy difference between the school’s electricity needs and the teachers’ homes. After collecting those numbers in between high-fiving curious children, we embarked on a mission to secure gravel for the solar system’s site location.

That story, however, deserves a blog post of its own. So, more on that soon.

Brian Kayoba is a student that I spoke with during the first round of interviews and site assessments at the school.  To give some more perspective on the role that this school plays in the lives of the youth that attend here, I’m dedicating this post to a writing exercise that Brian let me keep.

It didn’t take long during our conversation for him to open up about his aspirations to become a journalist, and later that same day he handed me a piece of paper titled “My Life History”.  Here it is:

“My name is Brian Kayoba. I am a male Zambian citizen. I was born in 1995 in Mumbwa, a central part of Zamia.  I am a Tonga by tribe. My parents used to provide everything to me. They were supporting me in everything.  My father used to tell me that I should be social to people so that I grow up to be a very good person.  My father used to work in parliament, he worked there for five years. He was a very good man, he was social to people. He used to help a lot of people.

My family lives in Mazabuka, while others are in Mumbwa. One day when my father was on his way to visit the family, he was involved in a road accident and met his fate. Out of the nine who were in the accident only him failed to survive.  I loved my father very much and I still love him even when he is not around. I always shed tears when he is not around. I remember the time we shared with him.  After his death, the life became unbearable. Even sponsorship for studies is hard to find. I only depend on my mother. She is not even working. Last year when I was in grade 10 term 3 I failed to come to school because of money problems. My mother, who is not working, she struggles to find money to feed us and pay for school fees.

I am at Sioma high school in the Western part of Zambia. I am now in grade 12. I am studying the following subjects: Maths, English, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Zambian language, Religious education, and Home Management.  In life I want to become a journalist.”

The planning phase may seem like the easiest part of any project–certainly easier than the physical work–but I have to take issue with that.  Planning is the most important. It definitely takes the most mental power, and it certainly takes the most amount of time–or at least it should if one hopes to complete the project successfully.

I spent the better part of nine months planning this project before coming to Zambia. Now I’m here; I’ve acclimated; and it’s time to check our numbers and confirm all of the assumptions we’ve made from thousands of miles away.  It’s one thing to sit down and write out the installation for an off-the-grid solar system in central Africa, but it’s entirely another thing to actually go through those plans on the ground and make sure we got things right.

Brian has hired Sinvula, a local Zambian, to help with the project.

As soon as I arrived in Sioma, the important process of confirming our estimations for this project began. My incredibly helpful assistant, Sinvula, and I went to work, splitting up our time into collecting quantitative and qualitative data on the many factors going into Sioma High School’s solar panel installation.

The qualitative part is fun because we get to engage the community we’ve been getting to know from so far away. We started by interviewing the school’s teachers and students–asking about everything from what time they ate their breakfast to how they feel about solar energy. When instigating such a big change in how electricity is created and consumed, it’s not enough to calculate numbers based on other numbers alone. A deeper understanding of the system’s users, their relationship to and perception of diesel and solar energy, and their perspective of the system’s value will all affect how the system is ultimately designed, used, and maintained.

Brian presenting EBL’s plan for Sioma to school teachers, government officials and students.

While getting to know our beneficiaries in Sioma, we also delved deep into the data on energy loads (which includes any device that requires electricity): determining meteorological resource availability, assessing existing infrastructure, then calculating absolutely every financial aspect (and there are a lot) involved with shipping thousands of pounds of equipment from six different countries to what town-dwellers 5 hours away in Livingstone call “the Bush”.

There’s always an element of risk when setting up a major project like this one in a place as remote as Sioma–in part because there are a lot of uncertainties. However, we’re pleased to report that all of our hard work and planning is falling into the right places.  And what better way to celebrate than by using my projector to offer “movie-night” to a school auditorium jam-packed with screaming students?  (For the record, “Thor” is a movie that transcends language barriers remarkably well.)

Stay tuned for more on the interviews and interactions with the students in the next post!

–by Empowered by Light’s Technical Advisor and “man on the ground,” Brian Somers

A warm greeting by local Zambian children.

I arrived in Livingstone on January 18, after a 30-hour trip from San Francisco. Thirty hours sounds terrible, but when you break it up into three flights, have a good book handy, and are about to start an amazing project–it’s tolerable. Really though, the trip started long before the 18^th.

In late Spring of last year, the Empowered by Light team was visiting rural schools in the Western Province of Zambia, distributing additional solar light kits and checking up on schools that had received lights during prior distribution trips. At the time, I was traveling in South Africa and received a call from EBL Board Member Patrick Crane who had just visited the Sioma High School. Patrick’s naturally a pretty enthusiastic guy, but this time I could just about hear him jumping through the phone as he described EBL’s next project idea—offsetting diesel with solar at Sioma high school–a boarding-style school that the youth of Zambia strive to attend because they know it’s their best chance at a better life. Patrick described a situation where the school had been partially constructed, then opened in an unfinished state, leaving a failed electrical system, unsafe and unsanitary living conditions, and facilities that failed to provide some of the most basic needs of a school. Given Sioma High School’s central role in the education of the Western Province’s youth, the EBL team was very eager to take this on for their next project.

After returning to the states and running some rough numbers on what it would cost to construct a renewable energy microgrid capable of providing for the majority of the Sioma High School’s needs, it turned out total cost of the project would be around $200,000. That meant that even if we could get a large portion of the material costs donated by suppliers, we were still short about $50,000. The team put heads (and networks) together to leverage our collective social capital to raise the remaining funds. We even put together a cool infographic and video in the process—check them out here: empoweredbylight.org/sioma.

Connecting the power data logger to the big 125kVA generator.

It’s taken a lot of work to get here, with doubts and road blocks along the way, but after landing at Livingstone airport and getting off the plane, it finally hit that this hugely significant project is happening. If we can succeed in displacing Sioma High School’s diesel with solar, this project can serve as a showcase for the rest of the country, as well as many other areas currently “off the grid.”

We at EBL along with the students of Sioma High School are incredibly excited to be part of such a significant effort, and we’re thankful to every one of the donors who helped make it possible. In particular, this project would not be possible without our generous in-kind sponsors:

Suntech – providing 24kW of high-efficiency solar modules (106 panels)

SMA America – providing world-class, off-grid battery and solar inverters

Rolls Battery – providing the most durable and reliable renewable energy batteries on the market

Stay tuned for more…

On behalf of Empowered by Light,

Brian Somers

Sustainability supporters, Silicon Valley and celebrities alike came together Thursday night June 21 to bask in the glow of Empowered by Light, a Bay Area-based nonprofit organization that brings renewable energy technologies to developing countries.

Click this link for more  here.

Full Article

We are trying to visit every school at least once before we bring the lights in late July. There are 52 basic schools in the district, which run up to at least grade seven. Most have grades eight and nine as well. The farthest schools are on the border with Angola to the west, an eight to 10 hour drive from where we are.

Liumbo has five teachers and 190 students in grades one through seven. Students walk from as far as seven kilometers away to get to school each day. None of these students’ parents completed basic school, the head teacher told us, although perhaps 30 percent can read and write. The school garden produces pumpkins which are sold to the community. But most villagers do not have 20 cents to buy one, so instead they barter with the maize they grow. One paint can full of dried corn kernels is enough for a pumpkin in return.

We drove on to another school, Sitoti, which sits right above the Zambezi. Sitoti is much bigger and clearly more developed. When we drove up, we noticed six large solar panels on the roof. They were donated by CAMFED in 2009, but stopped working last year when some ”unscrupulous persons” cut the wires leading to the batteries, the head teacher, Sleavenes Beenzu, told us. We assured him that our product is quite different. Because the Lemnis lights are portable, teachers can lock them up each night after the evening study hall. Mr. Beenzu, a 27-year teaching veteran, seemed excited.

By dusk, we had visited seven schools and made it home safely. As I write this post, I am still encased in my sleeping bag, typing away in the chilly pre-dawn darkness. I can hear at least seven roosters from the surrounding villages crowing already. Mooto and I have a similar trip today: a circuit into the bush to reach six schools.

Kabula is a small town in the bush about 40 minutes’ drive from the main road. The small mud-brick school in Kabula has only two classrooms, and its thatched roof is caving in. A new school building is under construction, but it is only half-completed, and funds from the government have run out. Other than the school, there are just a few huts scattered across a hot, sandy expanse. Even my colleague Mooto, who is from a larger town a few hours away, was surprised by the poverty of Kabula.

The four teachers at the school are piloting an evening study hall on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. For now, only 6th and 7th grade students are allowed, because there are only five lights available. Last week the study hall had nearly full attendance from both grades: about 30 students.

These students do not have their own textbooks. The school only has one science textbook for 4th grade, so the teacher reads aloud to the class. Because there are so few teachers, grades 1 through 4 are only in school for three hours each day. Grades 5 through 7 get four hours. Even with these challenges, all of the 7th grade students last year passed the national examination.

The past two nights have been surprisingly cold — below freezing – and this weather has devastated the school’s vegetable garden. The teachers were planning to sell tomatoes to Sioma High to make a little money for the school, but now they will have to wait until next year.

I talked for a while with Kabula’s Induna, the chief of the village. His name is Society Mayalo, and he was born in 1925. He told me that Kabula needs a new borehole, a deep well with a pump for water. Now the entire village and some outlying settlements — 700 people and their cattle — all use the same borehole. Mr. Mayalo also introduced me to his youngest sons: twins, Owen and David, who are 23. Owen has just graduated from Sioma Secondary, and David is in 12th grade, his final year. If Owen can re-take exams in a few subjects, pass, and get a scholarship, he could go on to university in Lusaka.

While we talked with teachers and community leaders, several people approached us and asked for a ride to the main road, which is otherwise a three-hour walk. When we finally departed in our Mitsu Pajero 4×4, we had nine people crammed inside: four students going to Sankandi, one high school student traveling to Sioma Secondary, an elderly couple carrying heavy bags, Mooto, and me, trying not to get stuck in the deep Kalahari sand. We will return to Kabula soon to try to figure out how we might help.

Ziezi Mulatamboo spoke quickly in excellent English, smiling as she explained to me how the Pharox kit kept the lights on in her home. One week ago, the car battery that she used to power a stereo and a single bulb stopped working. The same day, we arrived with the solar kits. Since then she’s used the kit every night to provide light for her, her two daughters, 7 and 9, and two dependents, 16 and 9, who are nieces living with her. Ziezi’s one complaint about the light is that it doesn’t have a stand. I tell her that there is one included the box already!

Ziezi uses her light starting at sundown, which is at 6 p.m. this week because of the winter solstice. She turns the light to the strongest setting when she or her family members are writing or reading. The children study from 7 p.m. until 8 or 9 p.m. Ziezi, who teaches grades 8 and 9, works on her lesson plans. When they go to sleep, around 9 p.m., she turns the light to its lowest setting and leaves it on as a night-light until sun-up at 7 a.m. the next morning.

She charges the unit every day, but only for an hour or two during lunch, because she doesn’t want to leave it outside when she’s not there. I asked if she had thought about putting the solar panel on her thatched roof. She said she wasn’t tall enough to reach!

Cipher Mwitumwa teaches grade 7 at Sankandi Basic and doesn’t have a car battery, as some other teachers do, to power a lightbulb. Before getting the Pharox light, she used candles at night, costing her about 7500kw per week for five of them. Now she uses the solar light for three to four hours every night, until she goes to sleep at 10 or 11 p.m. She charged it all day Monday on a chair in her garden, and it’s had enough power to last the three nights since then. She uses the light to write lesson plans for her class and to read novels and the Bible.

Lubanda Priscah is a slim, quiet woman who hasn’t used her light at all since she got it a week ago. She told me that she knows how to charge it, but she hasn’t had time to. This is a problem we’ve run into several times: some people think the solar kit should be saved for a special occasion. Instead Lubanda has been using a single lightbulb powered by a car battery, which she charges infrequently with a friend’s large solar panel. She only uses the bulb two nights a week, though, and still uses candles on other nights, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. With this light she writes her lesson plans and occasionally does some reading. Even though she hasn’t used the Pharox kit herself, her brother visited and used it to charge his cell phone, which took about an hour and a half. This is another major hurdle for our program: in a patriarchal society, how can we ensure that the lights empower women?