Vircynthia
“Our general manager, executive management and board members did something great. I understand it probably took a lot to decipher what the important things were going to be – whether it was going to be business or humanity. And, I’m glad that they chose humanity over business. They encouraged us that there’s a purpose for us being on Navajo Nation and making sure that we help our own; I think that was the biggest driver in all of it. I’m sure there were some really difficult decisions to make without having to put us in a difficult situation. You hear about people without jobs or people having to move for certain reasons, having to deal with loss. I feel very fortunate that the employees were kept as the number one asset because without us, what can we do to help our community?”
In mid-March, 2020, a 46-year-old man from Chilchinbito, Arizona, a small community of just over 500 people, tested positive for COVID-19. This was the first reported case of COVID on the Navajo Nation. Within months, the virus would spread rapidly across the Navajo Nation, the largest land area retained by an indigenous tribe in the United States. By June, the Navajo Nation had the largest per capita infection rate in the United States, surpassing any individual state in the Union.
Fueling the spread was a lack of water and electricity in homes – creating challenges for handwashing and refrigerating food or medication; and, without access to natural gas, people struggled to prepare food and heat their homes. Essential workers from the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority (NTUA) were faced with an immediate crisis unlike any they had seen before – how to increase utility access throughout some of the most remote areas of the Navajo Nation despite years of pre-existing obstacles.
A native of Chilchinbito, NTUA’s District Manager in Kayenta, Arizona, Vircynthia helped to lead on-the-ground efforts to expand water, electricity and internet services, while remaining separated from her family – her parents and grandmother – who stayed in strict isolation in Chilchinbito for over 12 months.
This is Vircynthia’s story, in her own words.
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I reside between Kayenta and Chilchinbeto – that’s where my father hails from. I’m a military veteran. Right before Desert Storm, I ended up doing demolition – that was my first experience with electrical. I was able to get through the whole experience and come back from the military and went into electrical, and it stuck with me. I’m now the NTUA District Manager, going into my ninth year.
NTUA is a multi-utility company; we’ve been in existence since 1959. We serve the Navajo Nation with water, wastewater, electric, natural gas, renewable energy, and communications. We extend services primarily to Navajos, so we are constructing and maintaining systems. The newest one is Choice Wireless, which is cell phones for our communities.
Choice started with just the basic cell phones, and now we’re doing internet usage. There’s a lot more demand on the internet because the schools are out and people are working from home, so those were some of the opportunities. At first, we thought, “How are we going to do this?” But, immediately, when we were informed that communities needed these services, we were working around the clock. Behind the scenes, we worked 24 hours a day doing everything we could trying to meet the needs of the communities. For most of the internet services, the first thing that came up were the schools and then, our own employees so we had space to control and protect people. We were able to get employees home and have them work from home.
In reality, looking at some of the telecommunications in the communities, I always indicate that somewhere along the way we are almost 100 years behind. You know how quickly technology changes; by the time we get something new and into the home, we already have to exchange it. I feel that we’re still trailing behind, but not so far that we aren’t able to manage things. We are trying to get on par with everybody outside of Navajo – but it’s been a very challenging situation, because these services aren’t readily accessible.
We are covering a 27,000 square mile Reservation, so we are still working on dead spots. Terrain is a huge factor – we have valleys, mountains, canyons that we have to get beyond. For the most part, we’re seeing more coverage than we used to. Because of the pandemic, we were able to get more towers up. We experimented with having internet on the busses, our office and various hotspots for students.
COVID started here on March 13th last year. I remember the date because that’s when I was told family members had passed and I was receiving texts saying, “How do we do this? What do we do?” Immediately, I told my grandma who is 95-years-old now and my parents who are in their 70s, “There’s gonna come a time when I can’t come home and you’re gonna have to stay put. I don’t want you going anywhere.” I basically locked the gate and put a padlock and said, “You cannot go out.” That was the most difficult part – being away from my parents, and it’s been a year since I left my grandma. I wasn’t able to celebrate her birthday with her. She turned 95 and I wasn’t there. My traditional thing I did with her was visiting every two weeks. I traveled with her once a month – took her places – and I wasn’t able to do any of those things with her anymore.
People were afraid and frustrated, and we needed to think about how to respond. We can react really quickly and say things, but the response is what we do. How can we help to reduce what’s happening to us? In that situation, thinking back to the military helped me. I had things I had to do quickly, coming into work and reassuring staff – “It’s ok. We’re ok.” So many people were skeptical about coming to work, thinking that they got COVID at work. It didn’t matter whether we were at work or in the public. The truth of the matter is that it’s invisible. We’re fighting a war and we don’t know what our opponent looks like. We can’t stand up to it and see it.
The biggest challenge was that a lot of community members don’t have electric or water. People still haul water. They’re hauling water daily. The first thing I thought was, “What can we do to help in those situations?” So, the first step was: How do you contain the virus and stop it from spreading? Of course, washing your hands and making sure we were staying isolated and at home. The only way people could do that was if they had proper refrigeration and access to electric and internet, because we’re working from home and doing school from home.
NTUA partnered with the Navajo Nation in the Navajo Nation Cares Act funding. We were given a piece of that pie to extend utilities services. Our general manager gave weekly to monthly reports to a council of delegates on how we were progressing. We’ve connected over 700 customers, Reservation-wide, and they’re not easy tasks. People live in remote areas – so the construction pieces could be from 100 feet all the way to 10-15 miles. Constructing means we build the lines – we build the powerlines to the homes. The challenge is how to get utility services to our customers. We collaborated with the Navajo Nation to streamline processes to fund the construction. A lot of that, we had to tweak a bit during COVID to meet the demands.
We were able to move projects faster than normal. We built and installed solar panels for customers. It was amazing to see employees come together with their personal experiences outside of our company and bring those experiences to life in building water loading stations, formulating solar energy, cisterns, etc. that are not our normal projects. We saw families become very emotional because they didn’t know if they were going to get the services. They didn’t know how long they were going to have to be exposed to the virus by going into town to get food every other day because they didn’t have refrigeration.
We had served an elderly woman who lives in a very remote spot – she lives a good five miles from the nearest neighbor. Nobody was around and it was just quiet. When we got there, I didn’t think anybody was home. When she opened the door – never mind that COVID is there and she was nervous – we reassured her that she was safe. We respected her space and told her, “We’ll talk far from you.” I watched my customer relations representative do a little training of what a light switch does, because the woman didn’t know what it did. That was something to see – I would say, the woman was 80-90. It didn’t really dawn on me until after, that she lived in her home and never asked what those switches were and what they did.
Growing up with no utilities, people see it as poverty. But, it was something we were already accustomed to – to me, it felt normal. Going out into the cities and being exposed to different locations, at that time, I really finally saw that it is different. We’re either still traveling by foot or on horseback or even driving. To say that we live in poverty – maybe in the aspect of finances, yes. We don’t all have money lying around in a bank account somewhere or big chests of gold in a sheep corral somewhere. We don’t have that. We realize that we are challenged with finances, but one of the things that I think makes us resilient is that we know how to get in touch with the natural resources that we do have.
For people to learn about who Navajo are – we are very rooted, rooted people with our land. People say it’s windy and I just say, “That’s Mother Earth exfoliating. That’s Mother Earth telling us she’s upset with us – that somewhere along the line, we’ve done something wrong and we’re not taking care of Her.” I think that’s what makes us different – the way that we see ourselves in these elements. I hate to say it, but within the COVID experience, there’s some good opportunities that are emerging. We have a lot of our kids home and we’re reintroducing them to tradition. People are planting and preserving the corn. They’re canning things; they’re jarring things; they’re saving things. They’re doing traditional things the way that it should have been. Back in the day, it was just the patient and the medicine man, and I’m seeing that being practiced now. It’s good because we need that to put us back to 100%.
Zero new COVID cases were reported in Kayenta on April 11, 2021 - 13 months after the initial outbreak.
We’re all human. What makes us different from the other? I don’t care about what the other person looks like, what color they are, whatever gender they are or where they came from. We all feel emotions. We all feel frustration. At some point, maybe joy, happiness and love. It all makes us human – there’s nothing different. But, I think it’s how we choose to program ourselves; it’s a choice. It’s not something that’s been burned into me, but culturally, I’ve learned from my parents and grandparents equally that we’re here to advance into the future.
There’s always going to be a purpose in what our life is. For me, my grandparents always told me, “We’ve come from tribulations of past histories; we came back. We were resilient. We stood back up. As we continue to progress and do the work, who’s going to do the work after we leave? Now, it’s your turn.” Sort of like running in a trot and giving the baton to the next person to make sure that it doesn’t drop. That’s what I’ve always told myself, that’s my purpose – to keep going.
In history, our traditional people always told us that one day, something great is going to come – be prepared. First it was fire, then came water. And something unseen is going to come. One day, it was going to come and it would take us, as a community, to respond. Reaction is easy – but how do we respond? I think those are the things I keep in the back of my mind every day. You say something – you over-say something, and you can’t take it back. I was taught that your tongue and your language can be a weapon and you don’t want to say the wrong thing in the wrong way to the wrong person. I feel like I’m practicing that now – I’ve actually put that into motion. Before, I didn’t really have the opportunity. The days were normal; nothing much was going on. But once COVID came, I didn’t expect people to look up to me and ask me, “What do we do next? How do we do this?”
I may be district manager and I may have been a journeyman at some point, but those are all just titles. Never mind all of that, I’m still human and I’m still equal to others, and I’m still going through this whole process. The only thing we need to decide is what route we are taking. Is it the right thing to do? What are the end results of this? And those are constant things I’m contemplating daily. I don’t want people to become complacent and think that this is normal and they didn’t get sick so it won’t bother them. We don’t know the chances, so we just need to keep doing what we’re doing right now. And, that’s to help everybody, not just locally in our community here, but even as a whole U.S. nation. That’s our contribution to this; if Navajo is doing what we can to preserve our own, then we’re giving back to the entire nation.
