Eight years ago I ran into a local Cameroonian named Jude looking to publish a paper in the IEEE
(international organization of electrical engineers). He had asked if I
could review it and it was the start of a beautiful relationship. Jude
comes from a small village that didn’t have electricity. When his father
died when he was young, a local missionary couple took him in. A visiting
Canadian engineer got Jude his foot in the door where his hard work and
inquisitive nature found him manufacturing rechargeable lights using PVC, old school
rechargeable batteries and car break lights. This provided the first steps for
him to begin seeing what electrification could do to a village. People
would take the light, use it for weeks, then exchange it for a fresh one while
paying a little money in. He also had the opportunity to work on the
missionary’s solar system which gained him valuable experience. Fast
forward some 17 years and now Jude runs a company called REIc that installs
solar minigrids in remote villages. These systems bring power where there
is no grid and radically improves these villages. The company has passed
some important milestones including large feasibility grants from divisions of
the US government to help their company move forward with the electrification
of 134 villages in the immediate future and 760 before the end of the
decade. His company also installs solar for missionaries, schools and
anyone else. We even put a solar system at the school where Lori teaches.
The minigrids in these villages bring more than just electricity to the
villages. They also bring education, opportunity and Internet. As
you may know, I like to dabble with computer networks. In a previous
project, I had written a router that runs many hospital’s Internet throughout
Africa called SIAS. Jude was using this routing software to run each
village. This allows them to provide sustainable Internet access and
serve locally stored content to each of the villages. He and I had worked
on how exactly to deploy Internet to the villages and started to get to know
each other better. Fast forward again to 6 months ago when our little
school was considering buying a generator because of frequent power outages
that were affecting the quality of education. Someone mentioned we should
consider solar and my immediate response was ‘too expensive, too cloudy, too
much this that and the other’ but I didn’t have any facts to back it up.
I went home and did my due diligence and the back of the envelope numbers
looked pretty impressive. I called Jude and asked for a quote. He
came out and showed us what modern solar innovations could do to solve our
challenge. I was blown away at how much better a solution solar was than
a generator. Solar basically pays for itself in 4 years while generators continue
to chew through thousands of dollars in diesel every year. I presented my
findings to the school board and I heard the principal mutter, “this is too
good to be true”. Our future was set for tiny power bills, no outages and
no loud, smoky generator making the school intolerable. We tried to get a
grant from Germany but it didn’t end up working out. In writing these
grant applications though, I ended up doing a ton of research into the
industry. I ran the numbers and learned of the challenges that
electrification of the developing world is having on climate change.
My past projects are basically running themselves at this point so I took the opportunity to really research Jude’s company. He and I were talking more and more each day about all sorts of different related things and finally I just went to their office and asked if I could be more involved. They were elated and immediately set an office up for me. Jude spent literally hundreds of hours explaining the industry, where the company was and where it was going. I felt I understood the basics but each day as I walked home, I realized I had just completely rewritten my understanding of it, day after day. The engineering and science side was very comprehensible. The political, business and financial side was just bonkers. It took just an absurd number of conversations for me to wrap my mind around it. What seems like a straight path to success is absolutely nothing like it. If I had 12 PhDs in related fields, I would still be short of what is required to make this work. Everything is just different in Africa and making one’s education and experience fit here is a round peg in a square hole.
How is this missionary work? Over my 10 years of being a missionary, I’m
not sure I’ve ever really answered the question of what a missionary is
supposed to look like. There are so many of us doing different things
from bible translation to medicine, from church planting to agriculture.
I think the thing we all have in common is that we seek to help people
physically and spiritually in the name of Jesus. Working with REIc, I get
to do both. I feel a lot is being accomplished, and a lot of potential
exists for great things to come out of this arrangement. I love the fact
that I can share openly about my faith with the many people who I work
with. I love that I can advise REIc to function biblically. I love
that I can volunteer for a company that is doing so much great for the ‘least’
of people as in Matthew 25:40. I love that I can use my engineering and
entrepreneur skills in a real way to make a real difference. I love that
our efforts are providing real jobs and livelihoods for the many
employees. I’m excited for all the great things yet to come for the villagers.
Did someone say prayer requests? This endeavour has me praying fervently
quite regularly. We often say that you have to push a ball downhill in
Africa. The context that Cameroon exists in is one that is challenging to
do anything, especially above reproach. We need prayer for God to allow
us to build out these villages with obstacles removed, government and chief’s
cooperation and wisdom on how to make a truly positive impact.
Check out the company’s promo video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqQ3TStGucs
We are in need of financial support again. Feel free
to donate online. We would greatly appreciate it!
https://www.covchurchgiving.com/p-298-missionaries-joshua-and-lori-shinar.aspx
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