Power to the village. (People: making a difference).

The village of Kami high in the Bolivian Andes now has its own power supply once again thanks to the initiative of a local priest and a group of Italian engineers.

The Italian Salesian father Serafino Chiesa was assigned to the village of Kami in the Bolivian district of Kochabamba. All the local men used to find employment in a nearby tungsten mine, abandoning their traditional trades linked to rearing llamas. The mine and its power station were shut down in the 1940s and since then the village has suffered severe unemployment and electricity shortages.

Serafino noticed that, while the equipment had been lost, the dam, tunnel and pipes feeding the power station from a nearby river were still usable. Why not restart the power station? It could supply the local school and hospital, a sawmill and any new activities, which might arise with the availability of electricity. The Bolivian Electricity Board was prepared to buy the excess production and the Salesian fathers did not rule out the possibility of re-opening the mine. The European Union could give a contribution.

On a visit to his home area near Turin, Serafino found out that the two water turbines and generators of a local power station had recently been replaced and the old ones were lying in pieces in a shed. The plates on the turbines indicated that they had been supplied in 1938 by De Pretto Escher Wyss in Schio near Venice. The generators were even older, but they could be reconditioned fairly easily, and volunteers were prepared to do this.

Serafino went to Schio with Efrem Fumagalli, director of COOPI in Milan, an NGO which supports projects in developing countries, to get advice about the turbines. By then De Pretto had been sold and the water turbine section, severely reduced in size, belonged to Vatech Hydro. The local management was most helpful. They found the original drawings in their archives and asked Ugo Grotto, a technician who had recently retired, to go and examine the turbines. He discovered that the two turbines were suitable and could be reconditioned at a cost which was decidedly lower than buying new ones. They were also of a kind which could make full use of even a small supply of water in the dry season.

Ugo became so enthusiastic that he offered to supervise the job, to be carried out by small firms which had worked for him when he was at De Pretto's. The turbines were immediately shipped to Schio. `I am the kind of man who would rather carry out a job by himself than ask for help, but having volunteered myself gave me courage to ask others,' he says.

As his `courage' built up he found himself asking firms to charge rock-bottom prices and mobilizing his friends to take on more and more of the work free of charge. Over 20 retired workers contributed, working over 5,000 hours, and many local firms supplied material and services free or at a reduced price. The cost was a fraction of the estimate. Last autumn the two turbines were packed in sealed wrapping, fitted into two containers and shipped to Bolivia.

Another story could be written about how the Bolivians and their Italian friends restored the power station and enlarged the tunnel. It is impossible to draw the line between generous human enthusiasm and God's intervention in making the right thing turn up at the right place at the right time and, last but not least, changing hearts.