Scheduled outages

Dear friends!

It is January 24, just about 1800, and I am waiting for power. From what I understand, fiber optic cables are being laid in Zambia and so, three days a week, power is scheduled to be off.

At first, it was a nervous novelty, like a power outage during childhood, but now I hardly notice them. It's all old hat: boil some water, fill up our bottles, avoid opening the fridge, no showers, store water for toilet flushes, and so on. We have a light switch that turns on a lone sconce over our front window that acts as our "power out alarm". Once that light unceremoniously shuts off, we know that we are without power.

When we return from work, we try to keep the fridge closed and we hang around reading and visiting others. Since we only get one channel on the TV and we are without internet, I don't find myself missing electicity.

The only thing that is missed is our limitless water. We have large containers on the premises that are pumped up full of water three times a week before the outages. When the electricity shuts off, we are off the hydration grid. All that is left for us is what is stored. Thus, we cannot use very much water during these times.