Towards to a brighter future
Today began unlike any other for me. I had just moved back to Indonesia and had awoken to the sounds of both people and animals beginning daily life in a wonderful village located outside of Banda Aceh, Aceh Province. The smell of fresh manure was sharp in the air in my house that lead to open fields and kebun, small hold farms. I stepped out of my porch to collect 28 kg of cow dung freely available on the mud road directly in front of me. Why would I do this? Because today is the beginning of brightlight, and its first question; How do we provide electricity to people who really need it?
This question had arisen while working in Pulo Breueh, an island off the mainland devastated by the tsunami that struck South-East Asia on December 26th, 2004. After my first day on the island, as the generator shut off power to our workshop and office, I marveled at the beauty of the village at night, the darkness permeated by the dull shine of the moon reflected off some new new corrugated iron roofs and the beautiful glow of candles silhouetting small wooden windows. But out of the hundred or so temporary houses only a few had candles and none had electricity. Only the village shop providing power to a fridge still hummed in the distance but soon went quiet releasing the night to the sounds of the jungle.
No sooner had the beauty of this paradise faded to the realities of a large scale construction endavour had my perception of what life for my had been like for the past 2 years. Banda Aceh after the tsunami was constantly struck by blackouts hours sometimes days long. Desiste this I had enjoyed a relatively constant access to electricty my whole life