I think a lot of people don’t know about how life changes when you go without electricity and light.  Because of everyone’s experiences with power outages, a lack of lighting seems like a minor inconvenience instead of a humanitarian problem.  Patrick would do a lot better describing what he has seen in Nicaragua in the villages that he has visited, but I would just like to take a couple paragraphs to explain my own experiences traveling without light or electricity.

The first experience that comes to mind is that of traveling in Southern Africa.  I was in Botswana, in the Okavango Delta.  I had forgotten to buy batteries for my flashlight so the only light I had was from fire and the sun.  It was interesting how different the nights were compared to the days.  In the US, we don’t realize how much we rely on light because it is constantly available.  However, when your light sources are fairly immobile, you become less free to move around and you become more isolated.  It can literally become pitch black at night, so dark that it becomes a hazard to leave the only available light source that you have.  I was with a man named Philip, a man from Botswana who was my guide.  Because he was used to tourists with flashlights, he was somewhat frightened to climb into the tent without using light to check it out first to make sure no snakes or spiders had crawled into it when we weren’t looking.  I couldn’t read next to the fire because the light was too dim, so I quickly became bored and ended up going to sleep fairly early the three nights I was there.

I’m not saying that this experience is at all analogous to what the people in Nicaragua experience.  I have never been there and have no idea.  I was just hoping to express how my experiences without light weren’t just a minor inconvenience to me, but it was actually dangerous and changed my living patterns during that time.  I was only going through this experience for three nights.  I can’t imagine what it would be like if you couldn’t escape this situation.  This is the experience I come back to when I think about lighting in Nicaragua.  Feel free to share if you have anything similar…