Electricity

(I wrote this post almost a month ago right after I returned to site from my last trip to the city)

Electricity came to Anivorano today, well not the actual electrical current but all the stuff necessary to make it possible.

The village is currently partly electrified. The catholic mission has a generator and some of the wealthier individuals have generators as well. The commune has a solar panel that is meant to power the BLU radio but more often than not it runs the TVs and light bulbs of a lucky few. Mostly people who are related to the major or whom he owes something to. But then I have no right to make any judgments as it is this panel that powers my light bulb, charges my cell phone and powers the TV at Lola's where I frequently watch horrid music videos and the worst possible American movies dubbed into French (I think they might actually be better b/c I can't understand them)

Ever since the day I got here there has been talk of the electricity coming, "it is coming next week they say, no the week after that, not I am absolutely positive it will be here on Tuesday". They never were right. It just showed up unexpectedly this Sunday. The family of the Italian Catholic Priest raised the money to buy and install a large generator and street lights for the village. People will also be bale to pay to have their houses hooked up for a monthly fee of about 4,000 Ary (or about 2 dollars), not a lot of money but still way out of the price range of most people in the village.

The mayor has spent more or less the entire month in Tamatave arguing with the customs agents because the electrical hardware has been stuck in port, after getting stamped with a huge import fee that the village would never be able to pay. I don't know who was bribed to finally let the goods through but after many false starts the train with the shipping containers arrived today. At about 2 this afternoon I went out to fetch water and there was this stream of people carrying boxes from the train station to the catholic mission. Seeing someone, I knew I asked what was going on. Their very typical Malagasy response was to state the obvious "we are carrying stuff" "yes I can see that, but what stuff and why?" I eventually got it out of them that the electricity had arrived, so I lugged my water home and went to see what was going on.

The entire village had turned out to haul things, even the midget (I didn't even know there was a midget until that day) and the young man with downs syndrome. Feuds and political rivalries were put aside for a couple of hours as everyone pitched in to bring the town a little piece of development. The children carried boxes of light bulbs, the women (myself included) hauled a whole host of random boxes and big metal things and in a show of brute strength the village men heaved and hoed on an extremely large generator and huge rolls of electrical cable probably way a couple hundred pounds. I am still surprised no one got hurt (though there was a lot of complaining about being sore the next day)

After a couple of hrs work under a bright equatorial sun and amazing blue sky everything was safely stored at the catholic mission where it will stay until September when 20 Italian engineers and techniques will to come to install the electricity.

It is impossible to predict how a steady stream of electricity will change this village (other than the proliferation of horrible music videos), but it is going to be a fascinating transformation to watch.