PORTLAND, Ore. — The remote village of Ventura, Guatemala has electricity for the first time, thanks to a team of a dozen Oregon lineman and an engineer who teamed up with villagers to build power lines.
The linemen embarked on the two-week project last month. It's a philanthropic partnership between the Oregon Rural Electric Cooperative Association and electric co-ops across the state. Clinton Curtis is a lineman with thirty years of experience, and he said the project gave him a chance to give back.
"They don't have anything," Curtis said. "They make money from picking coffee beans, nothing much inside of the homes, just bedding."
Curtis said the village had no power before the crews got there. They ran several miles of wire through the area and installed multiple large transformers, and now 37 homes in the village have electricity.
"Hopefully the electricity will allow them to burn less wood in the house," Curtis said. "They had to buy candles for their sole source of lighting. Now they have lightbulbs."
The electricity should free up a lot of time in the day for the villagers, Curtis said.
Shawn Foultner works for Consumer's Power Incorporated and helped build the power lines. He said before the power was hooked up, the locals had no refrigeration or running water. He said the job took two weeks to finish, and the residents of the village were extremely thankful.
"A lot of smiles," Curtis said. "A lot of thumbs up, a lot of broken English — they could speak to say thank you," Foultner said.
The linemen said the villagers did some of the hardest work for the project; they dug holes in the rocky, volcanic soil so the power poles could be put in place.