Welcome to hot season. In Jula, the name for the month of March is “the hot month.” The name for the month of April? “The really hot month.” It’s currently 89 degrees in my house. I went outside with my thermometer, and within 5 minutes in the sun it was up to 120 degrees and I took it out of the sun so that it wouldn’t break like my thermometer did last year. It’s kind of fun when you can put your finger on the bottom of the thermometer and the temperature goes down very quickly. (Hey, you have to get your joys out of the little things.)
No, I don’t have a/c. So when it’s hot I like to drink cold drinks and sit under a fan. But those two things have been rather difficult lately. On Sunday and Monday we didn’t have any water. On Tuesday the water was back but the electricity was out from about 3pm until 11pm. This morning it was out again from about 10am until 1:30pm. I have a rule that when the electricity is out I can’t open my fridge or freezer, hoping to keep the food in there from spoiling for however long the electricity is out. That means no cold water, no koolaid, no leftovers while the electricity is out.
The electricity being out yesterday was helpful, though. Can you tell what I’m holding in the picture? It’s the ice that had accumulated on the top of my freezer. I guess it warmed up enough to detach it from the top of the freezer, but not to melt it. That’s an easy way to defrost a freezer!
Besides water being cut and electricity being cut (and they said that the electricity was out in the capital for 3 days because something was broken), the last two days we’ve also had a transportation strike, so buses that normally take people to different cities/towns didn’t go. That’s over today, I’ve heard, but today they say that the gas is cut. For some reason you can’t get gas at the gas stations today. I’m glad I got a little yesterday!
Well, welcome to life in Africa. Now here’s a question for you – on the hottest day of summer, would you rather be without electricity or running water for a day?