22 Novembre - Aminou

So I know I said that this blog would be shorter, but I have to record this stuff...it's as much for me as for all of you. Please don't me mad, I am just a woman of many words...c'est moi :)

Peruse at your will. Thanks for following.

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I am sitting in Chantal’s house (the batik lady in Kpalimé) when she mentions to me, as a sort of sidenote, that she knows someone who has worked with solar energy in the region. I mentioned your name to him, she says, and he was very excited. I will call him right now, she continues, give me your phone, I have no credit. Wondering why she hadn’t brought this up sooner, I pass my cellphone to her, she makes the call quickly in Ewe and, hanging up with a grin says, he will be here in 5 minutes.

Not 2 minutes later, Aminou appears. Entering with a semi-bow and a quiet ‘Yo,’ a Rastafarian knit cap covering a mass of grubby dreadlocks, he puts down a heavy canvas backpack, filled with g-d knows what. The first thing I notice are his kind, sparkling eyes and, after a few moments, I realize how indicative they are of both his tranquil nature and relentless curiosity.

We chat for about 15 minutes and I learn that he has installed 3-4 solar PV systems in the Kpalimé area with a team of young apprentices, he is a state-registered electrician and, both in spite of these qualifications and despite his appearance, he is not a Rasta Man.

I explain the bare bones of my project and, thrilled to have found each other yet equally cautious, we agree to meet on Saturday morning so that he can show me some of his work.

Megan (my friend in PC with whom I am working on Chantal’s marketing – VERY nice girl, actually the first PC volunteer I’ve met here with best intentions and gracious participation in Togolese society) lends me her digital camera for the morning and Aminou picks me up at Petit Suisse. His moto sputters out onto the road, an ancient blue Jincheng covered with rust and in desperate need a quick tightening of its clanking chain before we set out. He says that today we must be prudent.

We go first to a site in Kpalimé, where his young team grins at me and introduce themselves – Elli, Pappa, Komi and Koffi. They have been told that there is a yovo here that wants to train them further on solar energy and are timid yet brimming with excitement. We go inside and I check out his work in a newly constructed building, the future home of the Directeur of a water-purification NGO in Kpalimé. He has done all the wiring inside and out (to my inexperienced eye, it all looks clean and well installed, but it will take Jon and Ron’s careful examination of photos to make this determination…) and is now waiting for the patron to buy solar modules and other materials for him to install. He tells me that everything is ready, but he does not know how to or where to get the solar materials he needs. He explains that this is the gap in his experience – procurement and system design. For the installations he has completed, the client has always sent the materials to the site for him to install. He looks me in the eye and says that he knows he has a lot to learn and that he wants to be trained. He knows that there are missing links in his knowledge. This admission gives me an instant signal that he is who I have been looking for and jumpstarts a certain level of trust –he wants to learn and apply.

After photographing his work and asking a lot of questions we continue on to another site. Here, he has installed conduits and wiring and again, waits for the client, returning soon from Europe, to send modules, an inverter and other materials for him to install. He shows me where the panels will go. It is an area of about 15 feet squared. Approximately 4 200W modules will power the entire house…

I take a sample of the wiring he uses, ‘cuivre en qualité,’ he says, from Senegal. He explains with a shake of his head and a click of his tongue that you can’t find quality materials in Togo. Ca ne va pas.

Soon, we leave Kpalimé to visit a complete installation that he has done in the village of Agou-Akplolo, about 15 kilometers away, down a dusty, rocky road. I am entirely unsure if the Jincheng is going to make it (little do I know, this is nothing compared to what I will see on Monday...)

As we sputter down the road towards Lomé, Aminou tells me more about himself. First, he thanks me for not judging him by his appearance. He explains that he is accepted in Kpalimé by neither the Rasta community, as he does not approve of their reputation and behavior, nor the rest of the community, because they think he is a Rasta Man. He quietly states that he does not have many friends in Kpalimé, that his friends are his family and his work. People don’t know him, but he knows well who he is, and what he is capable of. At first I feel slightly sorry for him, but soon realise I see that he is not trying to make me feel guilty, he is gently presenting to me his strength, resilience and commitment to his work.

He tells me that no one believes that he, with his hair and alternative views about spirituality, is a state-certified electrician who was trained at L’Ecole National Polytechnique by the country’s finest professors and engineers. After that, no one can fathom that he has his own business and a team of apprentices that work for him. He tells me that there was a man in Lomé who, through the grapevine, heard of his good work. This man also heard that he was a Rasta. The man didn’t believe it, and commissioned him to come to Lomé to work at his home, just to see if the myth was true. Aminou proudly tells me that he and his team completed the work in about a week, to the entire quartier’s astonishment.

Aminou continues, telling me about how he once knew a Canadian girl who came to Kpalimé. She wanted to marry him and bring him to Canada for solar training. He tells me (and I can sense a degree of pain in his voice) how he turned her down, because he has a wife that loves him, and that he does not want to come to Canada. He wants the training to come to him so that he can apply it here in Togo. When he recounts this story, I almost fall off of the moto and try, with difficulty, to keep my mouth shut in order to hold back my excitement.

I learn that Aminou’s work ethic is comprised of 2 elements – the physical and the spiritual. Unlike most here, he does not believe that ‘dieu va faire tout’ (G-d will take care of everything.) It takes faith but it also takes hard work. I am instantly interested in his spiritual side…he has extensive knowledge of plants and traditional medicine, which I encourage him to write down because, he explains, the connaissance is entwined only in ancient stories, locked up in the heads of wise old men…I ask him what will happen when they die? He says that the passing on of knowledge is an almost sacred responsibility, not to be taken lightly. Importantly, this relates to his electrical work, as he holds an unwavering commitment to his apprentices, to share his understanding with those who wish to learn from him. He explains that he needs to learn from “me and my team” so that he may expand his solar connaissance in order to work better, spread the use of solar and impart this experience to the next generation.

It is just incredible how things are falling into place, how I have found the perfect person. Jon is going to go through the roof when he hears who I have found…Aminou is already out of his mind excited to meet Mister Jon, especially when I told him that Jon too has long hair :)

Aminou tells me that we are going to visit an installation that he completed with one of his professors, Mr. Notawu, for ‘un vieux sage’ (a wise old man) in Agou-Akplolo. This ‘sage’ is married to a European woman, spent a lot of his life in Portugal and sent from Europe the materials to install a 400W (not 4000W, 400W) solar electric system on his Togolese villa. The ‘sage’ used to use a generator but, as it made too much noise in the tiny village and he had seen solar in Portugal, he switched over. Aminou says that he has been so lucky to work with ‘les gens qui me comprennent’ (people who understand me,) as no one in Togo knows about solar energy and it is a shame.

We stop once, after Aminou shouts something in Ewe to a woman along the side of the road. He slows down and tells me to hop off, he will be right back. He walks over to the woman, who I now notice is struggling to place an enormous silver bowl filled firewood on her head, while a baby strapped to her back wails and slips down her pagne. He helps her to readjust the baby and place the bowl on her head, smiling and greeting her quickly in Ewe. When he comes back he tells me that, not to be egoïste, but he wants me to know that it’s not just anyone who would have stopped to help her, with a yovo on his moto. She was astonished.

We arrive in Agou-Akplolo amidst yovo-yovo-bonsoir-shreiking children and women waving exuberantly from their posts in the tiny marché – the typical yovo greeting in tiny villages. We pull up to a white, walled-in compound and a friendly old woman in a pagne and ripped, collared tank top, nearly translucent from being washed so many times, opens the front gate. She welcomes us and, of course, brings chairs outside, sits us down and offers us a drink. After we have taken our sips of water (cold and refreshing from the solar-powered refrigerator!) we go through the introductions and Aminou explains that I am an American (he lets me know that he understands that it is very important that people know I am not European, for which I am incredibly grateful) who works with solar energy and we have come to inspect his installation. She claps her hands and with a smile, tells us to go ahead, all is working well.

Aminou says that if he had done a bad job, she wouldn’t let him back in. He installed this system in 2004 and there have been no problems with it. I am reassured. He explains that no one besides him is allowed to touch any of the equipment because another electrician might flip a wrong switch and ruin the entire system. He says that, unfortunately, another electrician may do this on purpose, to generate more work for himself…I am not surprised.

I check out the installation. Two, 200W modules mounted on an iron frame, power the entire villa. The villa is not small, but, as in most cases, demands only enough electricity for a few radios, fans and TVs, a fridge and lighting. Simplicity and rationality in consumption. A beautiful thing. There is a 1000W inverter and 2 deep-cycle batteries. All sent from Europe, Aminou explains, you can’t find these materials in Togo. There is a controller before the inverter as well, that I don’t recognize. I take a photo.

I notice that Aminou has installed an entirely new system of wiring, switches, light bulbs, etc. for the solar system. All of these have been installed next to or above the former switches and wires, which he explains were for the generator. I wonder why he was unable to connect the solar system to the existing electrical service…perhaps there is a reason, but perhaps he just didn’t know. I didn’t ask him right away because I didn’t want to offend him, but if it is true that he simply did not know, I hope that these are the kinds of gaps in efficiency and knowledge that we will be able to fill.

Before leaving, we are led to a school around the corner that has a few solar modules mounted on the roof. The old woman explains that UNESCO and a team of French installers placed them there a few years ago but that the system is no longer working. I ask why and if locals were a part of the installation and she says yes, there were Togolese involved but, ‘Oho,’ I do not know why it is broken. This is important information, as I have now seen several solar systems in Togo that were installed by foreigners, worked for a while and are now gaté (broken.)

This is my greatest fear. Like the farm equipment that was sent here by Europeans, broke down and are unfixable. Even though the mechanics here seem to me to be literal magicians, the necessary parts are manufactured in Austria. Like the tanks sent to Darfur by the UN, which sat at the port in Dakar for nearly a year, because no one in NY followed up on import-export permitting. Like so many unsuccessful development projects that don’t build capacity, that don’t train people to operate and troubleshoot, that just don’t go far enough…in my opinion, however well-intentioned, this is just not helpful. And we’re not going to let it happen.