KUTAI KARTANEGARA, Indonesia — Asniah recalls nights lying in darkness listening to cicadas and the passing hum of outboard motors after her family moved to Muara Enggelam in the 1990s, an over-the-water village in the interior of Indonesian Borneo, cut off from basic services. Around the turn of the century, a handful of homes in Muara Enggelam acquired diesel generators, bringing electric lighting for the first time to the timber stilt houses that still line the last mile of the river where the Enggelam meets Borneo’s Lake Melintang. The Kutai Kartanegara district government here later expanded this basic electrification program, but residents paid several times more for power than a grid-connected urban household. Moreover, the generators ran only from dusk to dawn and would frequently break down, plunging Muara Enggelam back into the void Asniah recalled on moving here three decades earlier as a child. “We were just grateful — things had been harder before,” Asniah, a mother of three now in her early 40s, told Mongabay Indonesia at her home. “Even though there was 24-hour electricity in the city at the time,” she added. Asniah, a resident of Muara Enggelam, shares her story with the media regarding her economic improvement since 24-hour electricity became available. Stable energy access provides greater scope for women to develop businesses and contribute to the family economy. Image by Yuda Almerio/Mongabay Indonesia Remote work Uneven access to electricity has abetted inequality in what is now Indonesia ever since Dutch colonialists introduced captive coal plants…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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