"Burning in the Sun" featuring Daniel Dumbele. Note the film-festival awards across the top.

My husband loped into the living room while I was watching the DVD, "Burning in the Sun". He had hoped to turn on a baseball game, but he stopped, watching a scene on the DVD. After a minute, he sat down.

"What's this?," he asked me.

"It's a documentary I was asked to review," I told him. "It's the best film I've seen about solar since Jeff Barrie and 'Kilowatt Ours'. About this young guy in Mali who makes solar panels by hand and distributes them to villages that have no electricity. It's really good."

Ken stayed and watched the whole thing with me.

Charismatic Daniel yearns to help his country
"Burning in the Sun" is the most memorable environmental documentary I've seen in a while. But it's also a compelling personal story that would be interesting even if the star, charming Daniel Dumbele, were selling shoes instead of PV panels. It's a plug for non-polluting, affordable solar power, but it's also about parental influence, about youth struggling for meaningful livelihood, about West African rural culture - all of which are fascinating to me.

Can't help but love this lad: equal parts European and West African
Daniel was raised in Mali by his European mother after his West African father died. Growing up, Daniel helped his mother install 350 wells throughout inpoverished rural Mali, saving lives by providing clean and safe drinking water. Said Daniel, "For me, it's nice and normal to be trying to help my people." At the age of 26, Daniel decided to start his own project: he learned how to make solar PV panels for $200 instead of the usual $1000, by piecing together broken PV cells discarded by American corporations. He uses all local materials to make the panels, except for the broken PV cells he carefully trims and fits together like puzzle pieces.

Daniel hoists a panel he made to a rooftop in Mali

As the DVD unfolds, Daniel sets out to distribute the completed panels, with more requests for them than he can fill. He focuses first on the village of Banko, holding a workshop for local people to teach them how to install the panels and set up the wiring. He's assisted in the beginning by a solar physicist and a female solar engineer, as he masters the circuitry for getting energy from the panel to the lightbulbs - which turns out to be quite simple. Click here to see a film trailer.

Daniel's panels profoundly affect students' exam results
After Daniel's efforts, the school in Banko is illuminated for the first time, and the students (girls and boys) flock into the brightly lit room in the evenings to do their homework.  The film tells us that the year before getting lights, only 20% of the Banko children passed their national exams. The year after, 97% passed!

Micro-loans make panels affordable
Daniel explains that he plans to sell the panels in the city, where customers will have to pay him cash. Then he will be able to offer "micro-credit" or "micro-loans" to the rural villagers, most of whom are farmers, allowing them a year to pay him back for their panels. Or even allowing them to barter for the panels.

Daniel finds a way to help the world while supporting himself  - a feat that still eludes me
The documentary caught Daniel at precisely that point in this life where ...