Power

Power

No, I have not forgotten my “Blog Friends.” I have had intermittent power for the last week or so. Last week, the electricity went off on Thursday for a while and then again on Friday. It was off for about 2 hours each time. This is nothing unusual so I didn’t think much about it. Then on Friday evening it went off again about 10:30 p.m. It was not back on early Saturday morning.  Last Saturday was Umuganda (community service day) so everything was closed in the morning. I hoped that it would come back in the afternoon. I learned it was only our immediate area that was affected, not the whole of Butare, but that did not help our situation. My hope was futile. The power remained off all day. Sunday is not a working day, so there was no hope for the weekend. PIASS has a generator and it was in use on Sunday morning for weekend classes so after church, I went, found an empty room and a power outlet and was able to charge my laptop and my Nook. But my internet connection was not working. I use a modem that is connected to the local cell phone company. It seems that with the power outage, some of their towers were not functioning and therefore there was no power. I felt cutoff from the outside world. It became worse when I later realized that my cell phone should have been charged, too. That battery lasted until about 8 p.m. that evening and then I was totally cut off.

When I returned home from PIASS, I found water on the kitchen floor. The fridge had begun to defrost and was leaking on the floor. I cleaned it up, but there was nothing else I could do. I had no access to ice. And I had a commitment in the afternoon. I was to go to an engagement party, so I left the electricity problem behind and tried to enjoy myself. But the longer I sat at the party, the more I thought of the meat in the freezer. I worked out a plan. When I got home, I lit candles, (it was getting dark), pulled the meat from the freezer and cooked it all. Praise God for the propane stove that ignites with a match. I was able to save the meat. I shared it with my house staff on Monday, since there was no way I could eat it all myself. They were grateful for the power outage.

About 3:30 on Monday afternoon the power was restored. I sang the doxology and immediately began recharging all my electronic equipment. But the power went off again about 8 p.m. This time it was only off for about an hour. I breathed a sigh of relief. Tuesday the power went off for several hours in the afternoon, but came back on. It did the same thing in the evening. That was the pattern for Wednesday as well. On Thursday, we got word that the problem has been solved. I breathed a sigh of relief. On Friday, as an act of faith, I went to the market and bought some meat. I didn’t get a lot, but some to begin to replace what I had lost. On Friday evening, the power went out again.

Fridge as a large ice chest

By early Saturday morning, when the power had not returned, I began to worry about the meat in the freezer. I got up to find my gardener and send him to the market for ice. That is when the communication adventure began. He didn’t understand the word ice. This is reasonable, since most people here do not have freezers and there is no snow, so no frozen precipitation. I found the word in my Kinyarwandan dictionary and showed it to him. He nodded, took the money I offered him and left. He was back in 10 minutes with two bottles of cold water. I looked again at the translated word. It literally means very cold water. That is what he got for me. I got on the internet with the little power that remained in the laptop battery. and pulled up pictures of ice. He was baffled. I tried explaining, I let him read the Wikipedia explanation. He still did not understand. Then he called a friend of his who had traveled some and who knows English better than he does. The friend explained in Kinyarwanda what I could not in English. He took the money again and went off to the market. I cautiously waited. He returned about 20 minutes later to tell me that he needed more money to buy a bucket for the ice. That gave me a bit of hope. About 20 minutes after that he returned with a shiny new blue bucket filled with ice. We quickly went to work transferring the ice from the bucket to plastic zip-lock bag to pack in the freezer and the fridge. So my fridge is now serving as a giant ice chest, keeping the meat cold if not frozen.

This is Saturday late morning, and there is still no power. I am using the power of the generator at PIASS to recharge all my electronics. If the power remains off through the night, we will replenish the ice supply tomorrow. At least we have some communication and a game plan this week. Only God knows when we will have power again.