Monday, August 24, 2009

Power Less

I haven't posted in a while. We had some internet problems this week at work. The power was often out all day at work, which meant we had to work off the generator. Currently, the generator is small, loud and not very good, which means that only the minimum of things could be plugged in - printers off, refrigerators off, etc.
My plug adapter is also a surge protector, which sounded like a good idea at the time, but when plugged into the wall when the generator is on, it senses either too strong power or fluctuating or something, and it refuses to give power to my laptop plug. So I had trouble charging my computer, and had to sit in a tiny, cramped corner near a usable adapter.
The wireless modem was sensitive to the weird power situation, and couldn't maintain a constant signal (for some reason, the wireless sometimes works fine on the generator, sometimes not), so internet was pretty much nonexistent. I had so much to do online that blogging went out the window.
To add to our power woes, for the first time, the power was out in the house when we woke up in the morning earlier this week. It had been out in the evening before, which is fine because you just eat by candlelight and play many rounds of Bananagrams. But having power out in the morning meant that the electric showerhead that heats the water as it comes through was not working - which meant cold shower or no shower. (I opted for half shower - attempting but unable to drench myself in cold water, I had a quick cold sponging and wet my hair a little. I might as well not have bothered.)
Then we noticed that the water quickly disappeared at work, and when we returned home, we found the power back, but no water. This meant no hand-washing, no nothing. Even Mohammed, our cook, couldn't make dinner, so at 8pm we found ourselves both dirty and hungry. We managed to scrounge up some eggs and rice and potatoes (using store-bought bottled water that we use for drinking), and went to bed wondering if we would be able to shower the next day.
Happily, the next morning we discovered both power and water, as well as fully functional internet at the clinic. I will never take any of those for granted again.

No comments: