On a mission trip to Uganda, Alden Hathaway Sr. was struck by the pitch-black darkness that fell upon rural Africa after sunset.

In 1997, Hathaway, a retired Episcopal bishop, founded Solar Light for Africa, an organization that provides energy and light through solar power to rural African communities. In 2003, the organization began a medical mission also, which travels alongside the solar team and provides general medical care to the communities and hospitals being electrified.

"I discovered that the orphanage had no reliable electricity for taking care of the babies and young children at night," Hathaway wrote on the organization’s Web site.

Since then, Hathaway’s son, Alden Jr., and daughter-in-law, Carol Smith Hathaway, IM 81, have traveled to Africa with him for the organization, a nonprofit, nondenominational church collaboration between the United States and several African countries. The missions typically last for two to three weeks, starting in July and finishing in early August.

"It’s been kind of a family affair," Carol Hathaway said. The couple’s children, Mary, Megan and Tripp, have all made the annual trek.

This year, the group installed a solar energy and gravity system to pump water over a distance of more than five and a half kilometers to Kakuuto Hospital in the Rakai district of Uganda. The hospital is where AIDS was first identified and nearly a generation has been lost to the virus in the community, she said.

Mary and Megan Hathaway brought a touch of Georgia Tech to the project when they painted a life-sized Buzz on the water tower the group installed at Kakuuto Hospital. The girls are "dyed in the wool" Tech fans - their mother, grandfather and many uncles and cousins are Tech grads - but they found the yellow jacket mascot hard to explain to the Africans, Carol Hathaway said.

"We wanted to take Georgia Tech with us, mainly because I went to Tech, but you don’t see yellow jackets in Africa - you see large wasps or you see bumblebees," she said. "They didn’t get it, so we told the Africans the story of the bumblebee and how, aerodynamically, it should not be able to fly, but because of a miracle it does. Many people know of the bumblebee as a sign of encouragement or ‘you can do it.’ We wanted to convey this message to the people to encourage them, that with their new electricity and clean water, they can lead much healthier lives. It is a very uplifting sign."

The family also has a personal interest in solar energy. Carol and Alden Hathaway met at Georgia Power Co. and the family’s home in northern Virginia near Purcellville is solar powered. The family has been featured twice in Mother Earth News magazine. The article may be viewed at http://www.motherearthnews.com/arc/6768/.

"We want to come up with new ideas to help those people better their lives," Carol Hathaway said. "Our work in Africa has opened my eyes to the basic needs the people of Africa have. The problems are not insurmountable with our help, particularly in the areas of engineering and medicine."

A licensed real estate settlement agent in the Washington, D.C., area, Hathaway said it has been enlightening to see the fundamental cultural differences in Africa.

"It was very telling to be in the real estate business here and see people haggling across the table over maybe $1,000 in a transaction, then to go to Africa and hand someone a T-shirt or give them a small gift and to see the pure joy and gratefulness of the people at what we would consider a small token," she said. "It is like gold to them. They know how to celebrate the gifts they receive. They have very little in the way of tangible things, yet they are faithful that their needs will be met. They have a joy for living I have not seen in any other country I have visited."

As operations manager for Solar Light for Africa, Hathaway handles the administration, accounting and financial aspects of the organization. Her husband serves as treasurer, her father-in-law is chairman, and they have an administrator who handles fundraising.

"It is still a very small organization, existing mainly on private donations from individuals and organizations. In the last year or two, Solar Light for Africa has received two grants from the federal government, specifically for the water projects and larger hospital electrification in Uganda. The Kakuuto Hospital grant, through the U.S. Agency for International Development, is part of a larger grant to expand the program into Tanzania with the provision for 100 systems for schools, hospitals, orphanages and private homes," she said.

More information on Solar Light for Africa is available at www.solarlightforafrica.org.

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