By Matteo Fagotto / Marie Claire India

"When I got back from India, my fellow villagers didn't believe a woman could do all this." Sitting in the entrance of her mud-and-brick house, 68-year-old Medina Edward proudly shows off the dozens of solar panels installed on the roofs of the houses in Chimonjo, the Malawian rural village she lives in. "Now, they just admire me," she adds, her face clinched in a peaceful and satisfied, smile. Illiterate, with little scope of employment in a society that doesn't value its women if not for domestic work, until one year ago Edward was just one of the many housewives of Chimonjo looking after her husband and three kids. Today, she is one of the seven "women of light", a fond nickname given to these ladies who brought electricity and development to a small corner of rural Africa.

Together with six other women, all from rural Malawi, Edward was selected by the local NGS Centre for Community Organisation and Development (CCODE) to attend a course in solar panel installation and maintenance at the Barefoot College in Tilonia, India. "It was a memorable experience," says Edward. "Being able to interact with Indians and getting to see so many diffenent people coming together was really amazing."

Founded by the Indian Governmnet, the project aims at overcoming the lack of electricity in poor, rural communities in developing countries. Every year, 80 women from all over the world are taught the basics of solar electrification through a six-month-course, and then equipped with solar panels, battery chargers and LED lamps to take electricity to their communities. When the seven Malawian women came back, they were able to install more than 300 solar panels on as many houses in their respective villagers. Today, these rural centres are among the privileged handful who can afford electricity even in one of the poorest countries in Africa.



"I still remember the day I was selected," recalls Edward, who, until then would spend all her day farming, cooking, and looking after the house. "The elders of the village just told me they were looking for a girl with a smart mind, able to grasp practical things quickly, and that they had chosen me to go to India. I couldn't believe it!"



But becoming a solar 'engineer' wasn't all that easy. First of all, Edward had to overcome her fear of flying and then get used to the traffic of India - quite a task for someone who till then, had lived all her life in a village 30 kms away from the first paved road, and where people still mostly walked or only rode bicycles. "I was so surprised by the enormity of the traffic in India," she says, amused. "In many places, the buses were so crowded that people spilled on to the roofs."



Besides, all the courses at the colledge were in English, a language none of the seven Malawian women speak, as a result of which they had to resort to using sign language to communicate with the teacher. But the effort was worth it nonetheless. "We learnt how the charger controller works, how to fix transistors and to connect the whole system," Edwards explains. "When I got back to Malawi, it took me a month -and-a-half to install the panels on 75 units," she adds.



Consisting mainly of a solar panel connected to a battery inverter which generates electricity, the system has had a revolutionary effect on the daily life of the villagers. Today, kids can attended evening classes even after sundown, while new economic activities such as phone-charger stalls, barber shops and cinemas are coming up gradually. Thanks to the LED battery lamps charged by solar power, villagers can now also stay up late at night without having to use expensive, polluting and dangerous paraffin and kerosene lamps which were often a cause of fire and respiratory problems.



Each household equipped with these panels pays a monthly fee of 200 Malawian kwatchas (Rs.30), which cover the maintenance expenses and the wage of the 'engineers'. Not all villagers can afford it, but given that solar energy is for free, many people have no problem lending their lamps to friends and neighbours. "Electricity has strengthended social reletionships; people assist each other much more," explains Edward. "Before there were many thefts in the village, now there are almost none."



The whole system is managed by the seven women, who apart from looking after the equipment, have also started training fellow villagers to pass on the knowledge in case of death or illness. The bright 31-year-old Moses Mabvuto is the first apprentice of Edwards. According to his teacher, Mabvuto has a natural talent and passion for the job - it took just a few weeks for him to master it. "I farm during the day and help Medina in my spare time," he says with a shy smile. "For now, it is a way to help my community, but I would like to turn it into a job".



Just like Chimonjo, Chitala too is a typical Malawian rural village, with few handred thatched mud houses spread around the countryside and surrounded by cotton, maize and groundnut fields, An utter peace permeates the whole village, broken only by the sound of kids playing and the noise of a brand new 'cinema' - every night, a flat-screen TV stand and an audio system mounted on wooden tables broadcast recorded TV series or football games, to the delight of the numerous youngsters who attend regularly.



The whole system is powered by the solar panels which were installed by 39-year-old Cecilia Lackson, a lean and extremely resolute girl who has become the new idol of the village. But despire her sudden fame, she seems to have not lost her innate humility. "I feel so grateful that my community has chosen me for the course," she says sincerely. "There was no other way I could have made it in life."



Studying has always been Lackson's main passion. She was doing very well in primary passion school, but when her two parents passed away, she had to quit in order to sustain herself. Rather than a payback for her misfortunes, she prefers to see this chance as a way to uplift the condition of women in the whole of Malawi.  "In our society, women have always had less power than men, keeping themselves busy with domestic work primarily. It's like the man is incapable of going to the river and fetching water, for example." The solar project is targetted at women and aims to revamp their role in society, something easier said than done. When Lackson was selected, the other women in the village made fun of her, convinced that she wouldn't make it through the course. "Now, they see us as a role model," she says.



One villager most grateful to Lackson is 31-year-old Stanley Chikuta, who became started work as a barber only after the introducation of electricity. Before, he was selling fish by the roadside, a tiring law-income job that would earn him 1,000 kwachas (Rs.140) per week. Thanks to the solar poanels, Chikuta quit this job and bought a shaving machine. "Now I earn four times more than my previous job," he says happily, snipping away a client's hair.



The initiative has been so successful that CCODE's goal is to extend it to all of Malawi, where only nine percent of the population is connected to the national power grid. Dispite a few technical problems - "It is impossible to repair the panels as they breakdown, and to get spare parts we have to travel all the way to Salima, more than 50 kms away," reveals Mabvuto - the outcome of the whole project is definitely positive.



A bright career awaits the women of light. Just a few month ago, Lackson was called by a nearby clinic with faulty electrical system - it was her first assignment as a proper electrician. "And I'm getting more and more clients," she concedes, her eyes flickering among the hundreds of lamps lightening up the dark night of Chitala.