While we were in the U.S., our house's electricity went out in Chichicastenango. Fortunately, however, the boys who were staying in our house (for the purpose of guarding the house and feeding the dogs) were able to find and fix the problem. Thanks to Michael video calling with the boys and instructing them in the use of a voltmeter, as well as Heather searching old photos of construction to find where our underground electric lines are buried, we diagnosed where the outage was. The boys dug down to the cable in the ground and found out our line was damaged and had corroded apart. This is the fifth time we have had such an outage due to a pickax used by our first (fired) construction team! So the boys patched the lines back together with electrical tape, wrapped them in asphalt roofing paper, and reburied them... a fix which won't last forever, but will hopefully last until we are able to transfer to a new line when the new house is finished.
After they successfully got the electricity back on, the boys finally confessed that there had been a lot of smoke in the kitchen, but that they were glad to see both of our refrigerators still worked. We didn't understand the "smoke" comment until we got home and saw the burnt surge protector, which had actually done its job!
We now have the refrigerators on a new surge protector, and we are glad everything is up and running again!