Eat the Rich

So October came and went and I slipped into my old habit of not blogging about things. It's November the something'th, which means it's the perfect time to blog about October!

Pictured, the personification of "God, fuck this so much." Thank Idelmis for being so expressive. This women's group meets, like, every Friday or whenever (sometimes Saturday), and the woman-in-black teaches them how to sew curtains and large sheets of very thin satin cloth together. I just sit and think about how we're going to monetize this (we're going to monetize this).

Unrelated to sewing is the fact that in mid-September, we connected the luz machine to the luz lines and powered all of Los Bueyes, Palma Herrada and Arroyo Grande for a whole 24 hours before the system crashed. Cue a month of head-scratching as we watch the mini-hydroelectric-power generator's production fall just slightly, while demand spirals onwards and upwards as people connect their houses to the grid. Every engineers is like, "Shit!"
I personally just thought they did the math wrong because they didn't think that every house in the three campos would use the maximum amount of electricity possible (which is like 3 amps). On second inspection, we found that somebody was drawing 24 amps of electricity (while the machine was idling), which could only mean one thing... Rich People.
At some point in the beginning of October, the luz would start to fail even when we turned it on at like 6am, when nobody was using electricity. Then, we'd find that the gate that allowed water into the tubes leading to the turbine was shut, and somebody had manually closed it. Diablo. Coño. 
A quick explanation is in order; in Arroyo Grande, water is syphoned from a deep pool above the waterfall, lead through a mile of big white tubes to a place down stream (at this point, about halway up the side of a mountain) overlooking the generator (which can pound out about 55kw of electricity at maximum capacity). The reservoir is located behind this big, ugly cabaña, where rich people occasionally live when they feel like it. Somebody was shutting the gate that allowed the water to flow from the reservoir to the tubes, and somebody was sucking huge amounts of energy in the campo.
Somebody suggests a stake-out at the source, a group hops into the guagua and they bajan la loma por la machina. En la noche, a dark, shadowy, villainous figure walks out of the big cabaña, cranks the gate closed, and walks back up into his/her house. Later, it's found that at least four houses, including the house of this sinister gate-closing rico, have hooked themselves up to the luz, sin breaker, and proceeded to suck the system dry. And they would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you and your perro loco.