Ingenuity

I am always impressed by the creativity and ingenuity of my Tzeltal friends. This week gave me several examples. We were working in San Javier, a remote Lacandon Indian village 80 miles from the nearest city, so we could not just drive to Lowes when we needed something at the worksite.

We needed a generator to operate our power tools because the site has not been connected to the electrical grid. We brought the generator from Ocosingo, but somehow left the key required to start it. One of the group members offered to attempt to “hot wire” it, but Pablo’s brother Santiago mumbled something in Spanish (even though he id fluent in English, he rarely uses that language) and went in search of the tool box. He came back with a flat blade screw driver, a sledge hammer and a file. He proceeded to make a key for the generator by pounding the screw driver blade flat, then filing notches into it until it fit the ignition and started the generator.

Then we learned the table saw motor required 220 volts of power, but the generator only produced 110 volts. No problem! San rewired the motor to accept 110 volts. It did not work quite as well that way, but we used it all week.

They say necessity is the mother of invention. Here, ingenuity is a requirement if you live and work without access to services and vendors we take for granted back home.