We had just missed our ride, the daily fishing boat to Makili Village, where I was to conduct our first impact assessment of Kopernik’s solar lantern project on Atauro Island. I stood with my counterpart Marcelo under the eaves of a weathered beachfront house as rain poured down around us. We stared out into the ocean. “What happens if no more boats come?” I asked. Marcelo paused for a slow drag on his cigarette before replying. “We walk.” Not relishing the prospect of hiking over the mountain through the rain and mud and starting our interviews tired and soaking wet, I was relieved when a second boat arrived pulled up, and the rain slowed to a trickle. We boarded and began a trip around the sea-green shores of Atauro Island to the neighboring village.
Makili is a humble but lively village of several hundred fishermen and farmers, built on the side of a green slope leading up to the gardens lining the path to Mt. Manucoco, the highest peak on Atauro, nearly 1000 meters above sea level. More than 60 families in this off-grid village had purchased the d.light S250 solar lantern offered by Roman Luan, Kopernik’s local NGO partner on Atauro. Like other villages we visited, the lanterns were so popular that a lottery—for the chance to buy a solar lantern—was instituted to ration supply. Beneficiaries were thrilled to have won the lottery, and made us constantly aware that their neighbors had yet to have that opportunity. All the beneficiaries purchased and picked up their lanterns in November, and so had been using them for several months.
The first house we stopped at was Lourenco’s, a gregarious former sub-village chief, board member of Roman Luan, and a solar lantern beneficiary. He strode up with a huge smile and a few English phrases, laughingly offering me a fist bump a hug. We sat outside his house as his family offered us coffee and children hung around shyly. After learning a bit more about his background, I asked Lourenco, my first interviewee, about how he and his family use the solar lantern. He showed us the lantern hanging in the kitchen, where his wife was preparing food in an otherwise dimly-lit space. Lourenco proudly showed us his library of books (a rarity among households) and engaged his 9-year-old son to talk about how he uses the lantern to study his favorite subjects, Portuguese and Mathematics. A crowd, including several other solar lantern beneficiaries, grew around the house, and I had the opportunity to conduct several more interviews – with fishermen, farmers, village and church leaders – about how the solar lantern has impacted their lives.
The d.light S250 solar lantern hangs proudly in Lourenco’s kitchen next to other kitchen essentials
Lourenco’s young daughter presents your Kopernik Fellow with a tais, a traditional Timorese weaving gifted to guests
I returned the favor with a Superman pencil and pad set, which I think was pretty cool if not as gifty as a cloth weaving.
Marcelo (far right), my Roman Luan counterpart, translates as I interview beneficiaries of Kopernik’s solar lantern project over coffee outside Lourenco’s home
Another beneficiary related the story of how, before the solar lantern, they had to use dangerous kerosene. Kerosene lanterns were dim, expensive, and blew out in the wind. He knew people who had been burnt before, and worse still, when his daughters would study by the kerosene lamp at night, he would see black soot on their noses in the morning – visible proof of the dangerous fumes they breathed in. At one point, while we were still discussing problems with kerosene, the man started laughing embarrassedly. I looked quizzically at Marcelo, waiting for his translation. Marcelo explained: when they get the kerosene, they store it in plastic bottles like they do with water. One time after doing this, they went to visit a friend in another village. When they came back, he accidentally started drinking the water bottle filled with kerosene fuel! We all looked at each other and laughed good-naturedly for a minute.
But then with a more serious look on his face, looking at his daughter playing nearby, he told Marcelo: “It’s a funny story for me. But we worry about the kids.”
No joke: it is estimated that world-wide there are more than 300,000 burn deaths per year, 95% occurring in the developing world where kerosene lanterns are common. And the WTO estimates that nearly 2 million people around the globe die each year from respiratory disease caused by indoor smoke pollution. [1] Solar lanterns like the ones provided by Kopernik can help alleviate these entirely avoidable catastrophes of human health.
[1] UN World Health Organization, “Indoor Air Pollution and Health,” September 2011, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs292/en/
