Text and Photos by Ken Thomas
The Mission
Electrical engineer Bill Wright contacted me in April 2004 to pick up where things left off some six years earlier. Our job would be to build a power line with a 150,000-volt-amp transformer bank to power Hospital Shalom and to wire up a back-up diesel generator they could use during power outages. We would bring electricity to the hospital building’s five outpatient clinics, X-ray units, pharmacy, laboratory, emergency room and waiting room.
Haywood EMC’s purchasing agent Jim McConnell got quotes for $9,000 in materials. I contacted two friends and fellow linemen, Tommy Duckworth and Harris Morrison, both with Central EMC. Along with my wife, Carol, and Bill Wright and his wife, Jackie, six of us would take vacation time and travel to Guatemala. Central EMC and Haywood EMC together donated some $2,500 in materials while New Covenant World Missions raised the remaining $6,500. Vine International of Knoxville raised money to ship the construction material. In June 2004 I asked my Rotary Club in Canton to consider covering travel expenses for Tommy, Harris, my wife and me. The board graciously agreed. Bill and Jackie’s expenses were covered by Samaritan’s Purse.
We flew from North Carolina to Guatemala on Dec. 4. Between the six of us we had around 18 pieces of luggage, six of which were loaded with tools. This is a place where they still do everything by hand, like cut grass with a machete and dig ditches with shovels for water or power lines.
Our first morning—after a breakfast of scrambled eggs and black beans rolled up in a corn tortilla, fresh papaya and home-grown coffee and pineapple juice—we drove to San Benito and Hospital Shalom. Right away we noticed the natives had put the concrete power pole about 50 yards from where it was supposed to go, which meant we’d be short of conductor wire.
In addition, our three 500-volt-ampere transformers had not arrived yet. But we went ahead and planned our work week, then enjoyed a spirited church service at a small three-sided cinderblock building.
The rest of the week we began work at 7 a.m. daily, hoping to get as much work done in the cool of the day as possible.
On the power line we worked with Wilfido Costillo, a 22-year-old Guatemalan who had worked with the local utility for five years. He earned about $5 a day, good in a region where the average pay is just over $3 a day. He lived in a three-room house with his parents, seven sisters and three brothers, furnished with two beds, a three-drawer dresser and couch. They had no running water and cooked with wood. Wilfido spoke no English, and although Bill Wright speaks Spanish he was usually working in the generator room or in the hospital on medical equipment. So the four of us linemen did just fine with sign language and pictures. Together we read John 3:16 and Romans 10:9 from a Spanish Bible. Wilfido was a good lineman and learned to use some new tools.
A big task was to get us and each of those 800-pound transformers up the pole. All the power poles in Guatemala are concrete, and without bucket trucks the locals climb them with ropes. Using a truck plus a block and tackle, we pulled Tommy and Harris up the pole in a tree saddle. But I was determined to get up there using the ropes that Wilfido had. We hung two 5-foot woven nylon ropes around the pole, one above the other, and pulled them through themselves to snug them up tight. This left two lassos for me to stand in and shuffle one leg after the other up the pole. Once atop, Harris, Wilfido and I worked on the poles as Bill and Tommy pulled each of the transformers up to us with a truck and rope.
As we set up wiring for the diesel generator the local engineer, who was sympathetic with our hospital mission, just about wore Bill out with the different specifications and designs of how it is done in Guatemala. Finally we completed wiring the generator and transfer switch, and installed metering equipment for the utility.
Meanwhile, all three X-ray units Bill tried to resurrect were dead. The heat and humidity did them in while in storage during a hostile takeover in the region. Since then, Samaritan’s Purse donated an X-ray control unit in time for the hospital’s opening in March.
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