CWEC lineman makes a difference in Guatemala; Mack Yarbrough helps bring electricity to rural village in Guatemala
By Bert Lehman
ROSHOLT – On Sept. 30, Mack Yarbrough, operations crew leader for Central Wisconsin Electric Cooperative, and 11 other volunteer linemen from Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa embarked on a journey to Guatemala to help families in a rural village get electricity for the very first time. The trip was part of the Partners for a Brighter Tomorrow project.
Prior to departing for Guatemala, Yarbrough said he volunteered because Guatemala is a country he probably would never visit otherwise, and he thought the project would be interesting and eye-opening.
“I thought it would be pretty cool as a milestone in my career,” Yarbrough said.
Yarbrough said he was also fully aware that the work to bring electricity to the remote village of Salinas 7 Cerros, located in north-central Guatemala, would be challenging. Making the work tougher was the fact the linemen would not be able to use bucket trucks to get to the top of the poles. The poles were already set, but the poles did not have any electrical components on them.
“We have to climb every pole, drill holes, put all the hardware on, and then we have to put dolleyson them to pull the wire through,” Yarbrough said prior to the trip. “Then we’ll have to go and tie it in. There is going to be a lot of climbing.”
The desire to help those in need made the decision to head to Guatemala an easy one for Yarbrough.
“It’s going to be a lot of fun to go build lines over there, just in general, that’s why I’m in this career because I enjoy that,” Yarbrough said prior to the trip. “Just going and seeing the country because we’re going to be in such a remote area. It’s really nothing tourists just go see. It will be quite an experience. And I think it will be a humbling experience.”
After returning home after roughly three weeks in Guatemala, Yarbrough confirmed that the experience was humbling.
“It makes you feel kind of guilty the way we live here compared to how they have it,” Yarbrough said.
The homes in the village consisted of boarded walls, thatched roofs, and dirt floors.
“They are very happy,” Yarbrough said about the residents in the village. “They are just so genuine, which was really nice to see.”
He said residents happily invited the linemen into their homes to do the electric installation.
“Everyone was very good to us,” Yarbrough said. “They don’t have much, but anything that they did have I think they would have given us. But they helped us, and that’s how I knew that they were very receptive to us. The locals, homeowners, villagers would start pulling wire with us and help us when it came time for wiring the homes. They would move anything we needed and help us run wires throughout the house.”
Yarbrough added, “The goal of everybody (linemen) there was we were just hoping to make their (villagers) lives easier,” Yarbrough said. “They work all day just to survive. They have a hard road. We’re pretty pampered here in America.”
Most of the residents of the village were farmers, Yarbrough said.
“They do everything by hand. They plant, harvest, everything is by hand. They are very hard workers,” Yarbrough said.
And when the light switches were turned on for the first time, Yarbrough said residents were all smiles and gave the linemen a thumbs up.
“Everybody knows what that means,” Yarbrough said.
Watch for part II of “Making a difference.”