Electricity

This time last week (Friday) we were very pleased with ourselves and with life.  We’d had a day in Kampala and had come home with all sorts of goodies – chicken fillets, fish, bona fide minced beef, cheese, butter and yoghurt. We’d been to the Driver Permit centre and been told that it was permissible to keep driving on our Victorian Driver Licences because, having no work permit, we were ineligible to get a Ugandan Driver Permit - we just have to show any traffic police that stop us our visas that show we are only here temporarily. We’d had excellent coffee from Endiro’s and bought good bread and roast ham from Quality Cuts. The drive in and out of Kampala had been incident and (almost) profanity free!

During the night it all started to unravel! The power went off and by Saturday afternoon our frozen meat was starting to defrost. Without power we had no way of cooking it to use it up and by Sunday it was getting smelly.  (We went to Mpanga Forest to console ourselves and I made some nice pics) Monday morning, 6 am, still no power, so I had a cold shower, emptied the freezer and unwrapped all the meat and fish. I washed the wrappings and put them in the bin of non biodegradables and Steve threw all our lovely expensive meat and fish into the paddock across the road to bio-degrade! 6:30 the power came back on but by then it was too late.  We went off to work, trying to be cheerful, knowing we were going to be asked “How was your weekend?” by everyone.

Stagfern

Monday night all was fine – we had eggs so I made a frittata and some Banana and passionfruit pikelets that we shared with our askari Richard and his mate. We also boiled up some beans ready for Tuesday night’s dinner. Tuesday Steve made his best curried beans and rice since we’ve been here and life was looking up. There was leftovers to put in the fridge for later in the week.

Wednesday was a very wet day and we were late leaving work. We decided to have a proper dinner at Danma Gardens (our favourite local eatery) and arrived home at 7:00 pm to no power. It wasn’t back on Thursday (we strolled to the corner to get a local speciality – the Rolex or omelet rolled in a chapati) and was still off Friday night when we arrived home. Steve had contacted Umeme (the electricity supplier) and they had said on Thursday that it was a planned outage for load shedding and should be back (it wasn’t!).

Tree being strangled by fig

At work the power is all solar.  The school has an array of solar panels and batteries that store the charge.  Sometimes though, on cloudy days, we just run out. I have been cleaning up the storage on the desk top computer that the staff use. The computer desktop is littered with documents saved with unhelpful names. There also many “New Folders” that have not been named.  I have put in a filing system in “My documents” and have tried to rename and sort docs into where they belong and to whom they belong. I’m waiting now for the queries about “where has my document / spreadsheet / picture gone?”. Hopefully I’ll be able to locate them. The power was going on and off as I was doing this and as there is no UPS (uninterruptible power supply) each time I restarted the computer it told me off for not shutting down correctly and needed to be coaxed into opening Windows 7 without the reboot it thinks necessary using a disk I don’t have. This task is hardening my resolve to avoid PCs wherever and whenever possible – Macs are so much friendlier and easier to use!

Black and white casqued Hornbill

Friday Steve got serious with the communication with Umeme.  Our biggest problem is that we cannot tell them where we live.  There are no street names or house numbers here.  We are in a village (no idea of the name – our landlord keeps promising to tell us but never does) and there should be a plot number.  We could track down the Local Councillor and ask but it has never seemed important until now. Any way Steve sent Umeme our exact Latitude and Longitude and a Google Earth screen shot of where we live. Another meal out – Forest Park this time – and home to a dark house. I threw out the left over beans and left the fridge open.

(Still typing, Saturday afternoon)

Friday, 9:00 pm the power returned. We shut the fridge and turned it back on. Then went to bed.

Today, Saturday, we braved Kampala again.  We tried a new Nakamatt Supermarket – very little there that we wanted – and went on to Game at Logogo where we could have bought a little butane camping stove – they had lots – but they did not have the gas canisters that power them! If we keep losing power we’ll have to invest in a gas hot plate.

In an act of faith we bought meat and cheese at Quality Cuts and came home. Just now the power has gone off again and we are waiting.  Will we be throwing out another freezer load of meat? Tears will be shed for sure if we do.  I’ll let you know.