The Electricity Happy Dance

On Friday, after a good but busy clinic, Lorraine and I arrived home to a puddle under the fridge - this can only mean one thing: the electricity has gone off. It is now becoming apparent that every Friday (every Friday) the electricity goes off and I am beginning to suspect that each week the power workers are going home early for the weekend.

This messes up our First Rule of Working in Africa, which is always charge your laptop battery when you can. The normal pattern is that we haul our dusty carcasses back home and plug in the computers before we do anything else. However this is not the prevailing pattern on a Friday. Instead we sigh inwardly as we acknowledge that the shower may be pretty cold, but after that, we throw everything down and skip off to the swimming pool – what else can we do?

You may wonder what the Second Rule of Working in Africa is and I have to admit that we only adhere to it on a random basis. It is always eat when you can. For us this translates into having a massive breakfast; Lorraine topped the record yesterday with a fruit/ yoghurt/ muesli mix that was so large that she had to take a mixing bowl to fit it all in. The reason for this rule is that clinics inevitably straddle lunch time and the idea of stopping to eat doesn’t seem as attractive as the promise of finishing clinic earlier, so we press on to the end. After that we go home and somehow the lure of the pool is greater than the siren call of the kitchen.

However, once we have sated our water/ rest requirements at the pool we return to a home to what continues to be electricity-free. At this time it can still be classified as not such a problem, but the option to use the laptop is now limited to squeezing out any remaining battery life (close to zero) and we know that night is fast approaching. Fortunately the house has a couple of stand-by lamps that we charge for just such a purpose so these are put on and we move amongst the eerie light. But hooray - our food is heated by gas, so actually all is well in our world.

I guess the part that really makes me suspicious is the fact that the electricity always comes on again at about 9 p.m. (the start of the evening shift?) So at around that time last night, we were all sitting around the table drinking tea (not being able to make a cup of tea? now that would be an utter tragedy) when Michelle noticed that lights were on outside, so with one leap I turned on the living room light and all was ablaze. It was at this point that Lorraine and I did the Electricity Happy Dance. Small things really do make such a difference.