Our canoe docks next to some thatched huts on the tiny island of Soledad Mirya and we’re greeted by a small dark Indian man wearing green corduroy slacks, a black fedora, a checkered tie and a necklace strung with shark’s teeth. His name is Roy and he is the sayla, or chief, of this Kuna community – one of 40 groups scattered out among the hundreds of low lying, sand- and coconut-strewn San Blas Islands, otherwise known as the Kuna Yala, located several miles off the Caribbean coast of Panama.
Stepping out of the boat with me is Nemesio, a solar installer and native Kuna who is bouncing from island to island, inspecting the photovoltaic systems that are providing the first electric light some of these communities have ever seen.
In Roy’s case, though, there is a problem: the recently installed PV array lacks power and his »congress hall« remains in darkness. The chief leads us to the open-air, thatched-roof building at the island’s center where he lowers himself into a hammock, gently starts to rock, and waits. Nemesio carries a Tupperware box that contains the only tools in his arsenal – an acid tester, a volt measurer – and approaches the controller, affixed to a post. He notices the green light is off so he crouches down and unscrews the battery caps, then gives Roy with the diagnostic.
»It’s empty of water. The battery needs water,« Nemesio says, »but not water from the mainland rivers because the iron will corrode it. You must collect rainwater and put it in the battery, then your system will function.«
Problem solved, the chief is overjoyed. Before leaving Soledad Mirya, we follow him along a narrow dirt path lined with white cane fencing and stop to look at several other PV systems. One, at the island’s health clinic, has enabled nurses to tend to sick children at night; it is also powering a refrigerator that stores vaccines vital for preventing illness. The other array, at the home of a 21-year-old man named Rubertiano, represents the first privately-bought PV system on the island. »Now we have TV, DVD, radio and four bulbs that last all night,« Rubertiano tells me, pointing at two 130 watt modules strung up on a rickety platform balanced between four tall posts outside his hut.
This fall, the Panamanian government has promised to install 60 watt modules on all 150 huts on Soledad Mirya. »The kerosene is getting so expensive,« says Rubertiano, »which is why everyone is waiting and hoping to have these.«
Filling a need
Not only in the Kuna Yala comarca, or autonomous territory, but all across Panama – from the jungles of distant Darien, bordering Colombia, to the bone-dry Azuero Peninsula – off-grid solar installations are modernizing indigenous communities while allowing them to remain rural and keep their old customs intact.
In the poor and isolated, central Panamanian communities of the Ngöbe people, for instance, a $13 million (10 million euro) program sponsored by the European Union and the national government has electrified more than 300 schools and 100 clinics with solar power. And in the far-flung Pearl Islands, 60 miles off the Pacific coast of Panama, I visited a village called Esmeralda where a government-donated, 960 watt solar array is pumping river water from a mile away, supplying all 700 residents with a reliable source of drinking water.
Electricity rates in Panama have climbed sharply of late, increasing between 10 and 15 percent annually over the last five years; energy here currently costs on average 22¢ or 23¢ (17 or 18 euro cents) per kWh. Under these conditions, it’s little surprise that the Public Services Authority’s 2008 approval of Resolution 2060, a net-metering law that authorized residences and businesses to install up to 10 kilowatts of solar power, excited a lot of people here. The Panama City-based company Permacity was the fastest to jump in, installing the country’s first net-metered PV system, a 5.4 kW array, on a coastal residential structure outside the capital last year.
But before net-metering takes off, the more immediate impact being felt right now is in the San Blas islands, where off-grid solar applications have already made significant impacts on the daily life of the Kuna Indians.
Said physically to be the second smallest people on earth after the pygmy tribes of Africa, the Kuna descended from the Chibcha civilization – the most numerous of the Pre-Hispanic Colombian Indians, which included the Maya and Inca – and today are said to number about 50,000. Having migrated north to settle this vast chain of islands more than 400 years ago, the Kuna long since developed strict laws of self-governance (they still hold twice yearly congresses led by a top brass of saylas, known as caciques) while their appearance remains decidedly traditional: their women continue to weave and wear elaborate hand-woven mola blouses, decorative bead wraps around their calves, and heavy gold rings through their noses.
Scientists say it’s only a matter of time before the San Blas islands vanish under the rising seas. As a result, the Kuna have started to relocate and rebuild their communities back on the Panamanian mainland. But in mid-July during the rainy season, I set off to the islands to see, before that transition happens, how small-scale off-grid PV arrays are transforming – and at the same time helping to sustain – the ancient island communities.
A journey across waves
With Nemesio seated cross-legged at the bow and his grinning, 60-year-old father-in-law, Adolfo, guiding the motor, we sped for two days in a purple dugout canoe through the channel of small, sponge-like islands that dotted the ocean’s surface. At each stop, while the conditions for generating solar power differed slightly, the communities’ thirst for electricity did not.
On Carti Mulatupo, for example, it’s been four years since the first PV system arrived. Now, nine of the island’s huts are powered with solar. But not all of the systems have controllers, therefore much of the excess energy they generate during the day escapes unused at night. According to a mechanic I met there, named Marcelino, most of the systems range from 120 to 175 watts. Marcelino said he earns between $50 and $150 for installing a system; he is the only person, in fact, on the 580-person island who knows how to. »Here we have more sun than we need,« he said. »What we need are more panels.«
On nearby Isla Maquina, by contrast, not a single resident has his own source of power; instead, the only PV system on the island is the one that Permacity donated to the congress center, to which people connect with car batteries and receive per charge, at a cost of $2.50, one week’s worth of power to light their homes. The sayla, an old, barefooted man named Mauricio, said the advantages of solar energy need to go further. »I want all the streets here filled with light so that people can walk around at night,« he told me.
»Women come to the congress at night to sew their molas. They’re producing more and selling more. The kids are studying longer too. Traditions will never die or change here,« Mauricio said proudly.
Rather, »it’s only our access to technology that is changing, and reinforcing, our lineage. Solar energy will help the culture by bringing more people together. When there was no light, people didn’t want to leave their homes and come to the congress center. Now they do, and they bring their artesania and their studies with them.«
On another island we visited, called Mamartupu, a resident named Fenicio said that despite the excitement among the young people, televisions and cell phones play little consideration in the Kuna’s desire to acquire PV modules. “Here, we’re only thinking about the light. We just want the light,” he said. So far, however, according to the sayla of Marmartupu, less modules have reached the island this year than the government committed to send. As Nemesio checked the congress center’s PV voltage, the sayla sat rocking in a hammock with his feet brushing the dirt floor and said, »The politicians promise us panels and then they forget. Almost a year ago they assured us we’d have more energy for individual homes,« he said. Nonetheless, even the smallest amount of electricity is impacting lives.
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»The moment light came, things changed,« he recalled. »We stopped buying kerosene. We started saving money on the loads of matches and candles and kerosene we’d needed. Now, and in the future, what we need are more PV panels and more energy.«
How PV changed an island
Some 50 modules have been installed on Carti Sugdup, the island Nemesio is from and one of the most populated islands in the San Blas chain, with some 2,000 residents. After we arrived there and made our customary greeting to the sayla at the congress center, Nemesio flipped a switch, lighting eight bright fluorescent bulbs that were strung across the room. The sayla, who wore a blue baseball cap and was missing all of his top teeth, and most of his bottom ones, too, said the times demanded that his people adapt.
»Now we have many tourists visiting. They want the Internet, they want to charge their cell phones – and we can offer it to them. Before, we had to wait until 6pm to run the generator; now we have power all day long. And what about kerosene? It cost us $1 per pint. Now we don’t use it because we have solar panels.«
Sitting on the wooden bench next to him, a trim, younger man named Ernesto Harris, in gray slacks and a striped long-sleeved shirt, reinforced the sayla’s words.
“The money we once spent on diesel we can spend elsewhere: on books, health, medicine, food, housing. Traditions sometimes take time to change, but we’re doing it, bit by bit,« Harris said. »First there were letters by post. Then radio. Then public telephone. Now cell phones.«
As I walked with Nemesio around the island, I saw many of the same fluorescent bulbs dangling from rafters inside the huts: bulbs whose bright, anxious glare have become the new symbol of the place. Spotting a solar panel on a thatched roof island, it turns out, isn’t as easy as one might imagine; the modules here have a way of blending into their gray organic surroundings, almost like camouflage. Some of the modules have been strapped to the roofs using strings and chords, and seem to be teetering there as if they might blow away. Others are propped up high on wooden platforms, nailed between four branches that are stuck into the sandy earth like posts.
At one point, Nemesio led me to the home of Nadine Morales, a 12-year-old girl who was sitting in her hammock doing homework under the light of a single pulsing bulb.
Before, Nadine said, »I had to study during the day. Now with the electricity, I study at night, so I have time in the day to play volleyball or to sew molas. Right now I’m making pillows to sell to tourists.«
»It’s a change,« she added, glancing at the light. »It changes the mind. I’m going to do math homework tonight. But my favorite is natural sciences. I want to be a teacher.«
Next door, Nadine’s neighbor, Lara, who is 17, has recently connected a 12-volt, 100 amp battery to her new Dell laptop, a printer and a set of speakers. The windows in her hut are covered with plastic tarps; the roof is a rusted, corrugated sheet of metal. But the 400 watt inverter at the girl’s feet ensures enough capacity for her »to study, do research, listen to music, prepare workshops for school, make photocopies, do so many things,« she said, beaming.
Beyond the gains made here in education, Carti Sugdup has benefited from solar in real health terms as well. Doctor Paulo Solis, who travels frequently here to do volunteer work at the clinic, said the ability to treat patients who come with urgent needs at night – childbirth, for example – is a special plus. He wants to see more modules installed to provide a greater charging capacity for the clinic’s lung machines, asthmatic breathers and other electrical equipment that used to require a generator, with expensive fuel, to run. At this point, he said, the PV »is fundamental for us.«
As Cynthia Deville, who works for the government’s National Environmental Association, told me about the impact electricity from PV was having on clinics in Kuna Yala: »With solar panels, their health has improved, such as in childbirth. Having light has literally saved lives.«
From distrust to embrace
Though the advantages are numerous and obvious today, there wasn’t always such a love of solar power here. In fact, at the beginning, the Kuna Indians treated the idea with strong skepticism.
»At the start, they tore up [Permacity’s] offer letters to install PV here,« said Nemesio, who was taken by an uncle to live in Panama City when he was a child, and considers both the city and the island – where he does seminars teaching fellow Kuna how to install, maintain and repair their PV systems – his home.
»They didn’t trust the intentions, they thought they were being bought off. But when they realized that their women would be able to sew more molas, that their children could study at night and that they would save money on kerosene, they agreed. Now,« he says, »they’ve seen that solar energy has become necessary.«
Not all of the changes brought about by PV power, however, are positive. For one thing, many more children now spend their days and also their nights watching television. »Before, kids went with their parents to cultivate food on the mainland, bananas, yucca, fruits. They learned about agriculture,« Nemesio went on, »but now they don’t go, now they watch TV. The parents need to take them to the mountains to work, to keep them used to it. If not,« he said, »they’ll become lazy thieves.«
On the whole, though, it seems, the Kuna Indians have gained more than they have lost with the addition of electricity in their lives. And for Nemesio, they will continue to gain as long as they are masters of their own systems.
»It’s important that they learn to be their own technicians. Sometimes an installer comes and doesn’t fully explain to them how the system works.« That is Nemesio’s task, and it’s a purpose that he welcomes.
»They need to keep monitoring the systems. Checking the battery acid levels. Keeping the panels clean of dust, keeping the controllers functioning,« he said, twisting up a smile. »Out here on the ocean, on the islands, even [too many] bird droppings can affect a system.«