Note: This is part 4 of 8 field notes from a solar home system assessment my team conducted in remote communities in Palawan. Details that could identify the service provider and specific project have been redacted to protect the integrity of the work. The observations and reflections here are my own.
I grew up with light. Not just sometimes—always. Flipping a switch and having the room respond is so ordinary to me that I never once thought of it as something to be grateful for. It took a two-hour brownout at a beach resort in Palawan to make me understand, just a little, what the people I was interviewing already knew by heart.
Two hours. That’s all it was. And I noticed how quickly everything my colleagues and I had planned to do that evening became irrelevant—not because we were tired, but because the dark made everything feel finished. There was nothing left to do but wait for the light to come back. And it’s not just about having no light. We also lost access to the internet, which left us feeling incapacitated to do anything but sleep.
And yet I know that my experience isn’t the same as the respondents of our research. I was inconvenienced. They are constrained. I waited two hours; some of them have waited their whole lives. I can’t fully claim to understand what that does to a person and what it does to how you plan your evenings, how long you work, how much you hope for. But I started to, even in that brief moment.
The experience made me reconsider how light at night isn’t just about seeing. It’s about having the option to keep going: to read, to work, to stay awake a little longer with the people you love. And when that option is taken away, or was never there to begin with, something quieter is lost too. I’m still thinking about what to call it.
jessa 
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