Electricity Update

Well, I've been trying to avoid the subject, but a couple of my loyal readers have emailed me to ask what's going on with the electricity. Since I don't have more than a couple loyal readers, I have to keep them happy, so here goes.

Last night the electric company came to fix the transformer. They came not because Neighbor 1 had been calling them every few minutes all day, though he had, but because Neighbor 2 went out and tracked down a repair truck and paid the guys money to come to our neighborhood. When they arrived, they began asking other neighbors for money as well. (See Thursday's post about corruption. It's a way of life here.)

By the time the repairmen left, the other houses in our neighborhood had power, but ours still did not. The only thing we can figure is that it has something to do with the rewiring we had done when we got the new generator. The light comes on in our kitchen showing that the electricity is coming to the house, but none of the appliances is being reached by the electricity. (You can tell from my bumbling explanation that I have only the vaguest concept of how any of it works.)

Our electrician (who in a country with low employment is doing very well for himself, even if we're the only people he works for) is coming over this afternoon to work on the problem. We hope the power comes on before he gets here, because otherwise he can only do a limited amount.

I am heartily sick of the whole subject, and in fact I had decided yesterday that I was going to focus on living with the "new normal" of generating all our own power, and stop even thinking about the electric company. In fact, I was pretending they didn't exist. Denial was working very well for me until they showed up last night and raised my hopes again.

Let's just not talk about it any more.