Tidbits about daily life

I am sitting in my living with candles lit. The electricity is out. Power cuts are normal here. When I first arrived the power would go out every once in a while for 15 minutes or an hour or so, but ever since the beginning of this year power has been going out on almost a daily basis. The electricity went off a little after 6 pm and will not come back on until around 11 pm. Most days there are 5-12 hours with no electricity. The time it will come back on is pretty consistent. If it goes off in the morning, usually between 6-8 am, then it will come back on at 6 pm. If it goes off at 6 pm, it will come back on around 11 pm. This is not in all parts of town, but this is how it is where I live. And this is normal. So we keep bottles of frozen water in our freeze to put in the fridge when the power goes out to keep our food cold. We try to keep our phones and computers charged all the time. We adjust.

Other tidbits of insight into my day today. A little bit ago I was sitting in the dark helping one of our students do something on the computer and I was startled by a rustling sound. We have a rat or rats that have been coming into our house. I have seen the rat or one of the rats a handful of times. There were holes made by rats in the screen of one of the windows in the kitchen. Earlier today I noticed a new hole in a screen in the living room. Rats chew holes through the screens to come in and out. I heard the rustling noise and it was coming from the window with the new hole. I just don’t know if the rat was coming in or out. I hope it was departing. I closed the window, sealing off the hole. If it was coming in it is either trapped inside now or it will chew another hole to get out.

This afternoon little Baraka, a neighborhood boy, wandered into my house. This happens from time to time. I think he is about 1 year old and he lives in the house next to ours. The kids from the center play with him regularly and therefore he has gotten used to coming to my front porch. Today, I followed him out to my front porch to see that he had pooped right in front of my door and had tracked it around a bit. Most kids here don’t wear diapers of any kind when they are around their house or neighborhood.

The gate and entrance to our house. We live in the front section of a house divided into about 6 different rental units.

The kitchen. There is a tap at the sink, but no water comes out of it, so the red bucket is used to bring water into the kitchen to wash dishes and such.

We had running water for a short period of time. The city water would come on every couple of days for a short time. Water would be pumped up into a tank on the roof of the house and then water would come out of the sinks and shower and such. Then the city water stopped coming on. For a few months there was no water coming from the city pipes. About the time the electricity starting cutting off each day, the city water started to come back on. It only comes on sporadically, but despite the water coming back we still have no running water in the house because during the months that the city water was off our water pump was stolen. Without pumping the water into the tank on the roof, there is just not enough water pressure for water to come out of the faucets inside the house. So, we catch some water in a basin from the faucet out front and buy the rest from water vendors. It’s bucket baths and carrying buckets of water in the house to wash dishes and flush the toilet and such.