Lights Out

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

Today marks my one-month milestone. I can’t believe I’ve been here for a whole month already. The time is just flying past. I only have 2 months left for this project – eek! But I feel I am making good progress. I have finished the needs assessments, and the report is 90% written, hopefully I’ll have it finished this week assuming there are no major interruptions, which you can never be sure of in these parts.

On the bright side, I had a meeting with the WUSC-Malawi head office on Friday to present my workshop budget. They have a special events funding allowance that I hope will fund my workshops next month. As usual we fussed over some of the details but at the end of the meeting Mr. Mapemba said that ‘The workshop will happen’. Yay!!

On the dark side, and I mean this literally, there is still no power in Dedza. It is going to take some time to order the piece for the transformer. I think they have to get it from Jo’berg. So my house is still in the dark – at night its candlelight and charcoal stove. Still camping. The generator, which broke down Thursday, still has not been repaired (I don’t think they can afford the new part). So the office has been moved to another part of town. Or so I’ve been told. I’ve stayed in Lilongwe to write (where I can plug in my laptop) over the weekend plus 3 days, but I will be leaving for Dedza again this afternoon, after my obligatory visit to the internet café of course.

If I may throw in one more twist of irony – this morning when I woke up there was no power in the house. Well I thought to myself, we had gone 4 whole days without losing power, so finally losing it for the usual couple hours was to be expected. Alas this was not the issue. Apparently the housekeeper had forgotten to top up the electricity meter and now the house is without power until he does (hopefully sometime today). So yeah. It’s quite a different billing process from the Canadian way. Instead of just getting a bill in the mail and paying that, in Malawi you get a top up card (just like your cell phone), which you top up your electricity meter with. And when your card runs out so does your electricity. How do you like that? I suppose it may be a more efficient way for ESCOM to run their business. Imagine the # of unpaid bills they would have?! And it would make you think twice about leaving the lights on in the empty room. But if you forget to top up your meter and you’re in the middle of cooking dinner, or if you’re gone for the weekend and your fridge stops running…that would be rotten.