Reaching Out To The Sun

A village in Rajasthan trains poor African women to harness solar energy.

- Sneha Bhura

It is 4 pm at the Barefoot College in Tilonia, a village in the Ajmer district of Rajasthan. A pristine white courtyard leads to a room where the large centre table is littered with an assortment of electrical bits and bobs—multimeter, nose plier, wire cutter, soldering iron, resistors, diodes, charge controller and the works. An aerial view of the table might resemble a high-tech multi-coloured world map. The middle-aged women seated around the table have come from Cambodia, Suriname, Guatemala, Namibia, Burkina Faso, Malawi, magically amplifying the imagery of a world enclosed within the four corners of a page to that of a classroom. On the blackboard facing the table, there are names of colours written in Swahili: chokuda, bulauni, chofira, orenji, yero... (black, brown, red, orange, yellow), explaining the standard colour coding in this ‘Solar Workshop’.

A lean, upright and slightly frazzled Gordhan Lal, popularly known as ‘Masterji’, stands in front of the blackboard with his notebook and a crutch— he was afflicted with polio as a child. He repeatedly calls out names of electrical tools and components to help his international students commit them to memory. Not all are interested to diligently repeat after Masterji, though. The soft glow of the evening sun has filtered into the classroom, casting an aura of Saturday sluggishness all around. The class looks like it is going to be dismissed soon. Rosaline, a tall and buxom 36-year-old housewife from Zimbabwe, looks furious. She wants to pack up for her evening repast, but is hard-pressed to express her restlessness in her native tongue, damara nama. Neither is she familiar with Hindi. Magan, a 43-year old trainer clad in a pink bandhej saree is hovering around the table, adjusting her