Walking Barefoot in Maputo

Life’s been crazy, in a good way. Three conferences in three weeks means I’m a busy bee! I just returned from a REDES planning conference in Maputo, which went fantastically well. (What’s not to love about free hotel, hot shower, consistent electricity, good company, and great food? Except, of course, that being in a first-world environment is quite a money vacuum.)

The REDES regional conference is the first week of August, so we had/ still have a lot to do. It’s going to be awesome though- the REDES program continues to grow every year and this year, the Southern conference by itself will host approximately 116 participants! (Adolescent girls, Mozambican facilitators, Peace Corps volunteers, and guest speakers)

I am training to take over the REDES National Financial Coordinator next year, which means that I will be in charge of grant writing for the REDES program and all the moneys we get. Basically, I’m the budget lady. My MOZ15 girls and I already have lots of ideas on how to improve the program and I think we’ll make a great team.

But of course, we are volunteers… so not all of our time spent in Maputo was spent working. In three full days I offered my happy stomach mac & cheese, a giant hamburger, pizza, and a Thai food buffet, not to mention a couple glasses of wine.

I was walking back to the Peace Corps office from lunch one afternoon, when I stumbled over a crack in the sidewalk and my sandal strap broke. (This is at least the fifth pair I’ve gone through in Mozambique, by the way.) I was only about halfway to my destination, alone, and the street I was on was not conducive to getting a boleia. It struck me then how strange and funny the situation was… Even stranger still when around the corner came the new PC country director, with his wife, out for a stroll. While they tried to phone the Peace Corps driver to come pick me up, one of the uniformed armed guards for the President’s house walked across the street and sternly demanded that we continue moving. I hobbled down another block, taking my shoe off halfway and just going barefoot until we reached the next street corner, where another volunteer met me with a random pair of tennis shoes that had been sitting in the Peace Corps office for months, and that miraculously fit my 6.5 size feet.

The last night in Maputo, all of the REDES girls and I went to a sports bar to watch the Women’s World Cup finals (Japan vs. USA). I cheered for Japan, in honor of my good friend Yoko in Chibuto, while the rest of the volunteers obviously rooted for USA. Afterwards, several people in the bar stopped by the table to congratulate me on “my team’s” win, and couldn’t quite wrap their minds around the fact that I’m actually American, but rooted for Japan just for kicks. (“But you look Japanese.”)

The day we left Maputo, two other volunteers and I jumped on a chapa but ended up missing the Junta stop, so we decided we would just keep going out of Maputo and try to catch a boleia on the way, which none of us had ever tried. The car that ended up stopping for us was actually driven by two people I had worked with in Chibuto, a Portuguese couple returning from their honeymoon. Small world!

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I got home to Chicumbane and found… no electricity. The electricity problem has steadily gotten worse in the past few weeks, to the point that it will go out for days at a time and all of Monday I only had one hour of electricity during the day. I got sick from eating something in the fridge, and I wasn’t able to heat water to take a bath for a few days. (Cooking > bathing, and if I only have one hour to accomplish one, you know which one I’m going for!)

My neighbor a few doors down came over to tell me that my dogs have been eating her chickens and stealing her clothes, and that they are becoming a huge problem for her. I didn’t know how to respond to her accusations, because 1) I’d been out of town for several days; 2) My dogs are fed extremely well and I don’t know why they would need to eat chickens; 3) With Mel in heat, numerous male dogs are constantly hanging around in the yard, even though I throw rocks at them and chase them away. (They also keep me up all night with demonic growls and snarls and territory stakeouts.) While I don’t think that my dogs are the ones (or at least, the only ones) causing trouble, I do think that I am the only one that can be held accountable. Which is kind of the problem I’m having the electricity… not being able to find anyone who will take responsibility for the relentless blackouts in my zone / block / house.

I feel powerless to do much to resolve the dog issue, which makes me nervous because I’ve heard of people poisoning dogs for eating chickens. I don’t have a fence to lock Xima and Mel up in, and I don’t have any sort of chain or rope strong enough to keep them tied. All I can do is keep them inside the house at night like I used to, but obviously there’s no way to control them when I’m out of town.

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Anyway, here are some of the other things I’ve been up to, at site:

With Tsembeka, I am currently working on Organizational Development tools, conducting a needs assessment, and designing an Income Generation sewing project that will later be submitted as a VAST grant proposal.

I discovered last week that Tsembeka receives a lot of miscellaneous donated items from Habitat for Humanity (clothes, toys, etc), but that no one at the office could identify a Frisbee. (“What’s this?”… “I think it’s a plate.”) That means that the OVC’s and families receiving these Frisbees also don’t know exactly what they’re getting. What’s next? FRISBEE TRAINING!! (I will also be running Frisbee sessions at the REDES conference)

***Does anyone have an old laptop computer they can donate to the org?***

Much of time spent in the office is wasted on creating calendars and forms with a pen and a ruler. Writing a calendar of events will literally take two hours because heaven forbid they put up a calendar with something crossed out.

Tsembeka once had a computer, but it was stolen. I have been updating some of their forms for them, but would prefer to do computer trainings with them (much more sustainable!) on a computer that belongs to the org. PC would be better, because Macs are very, very rare in Moz. (I’d bet that the majority of Macs in country belong to PC volunteers.) If anyone is interested, I’ll write up an organization description / statement of need later and either post it or email it. Kevin and I are going to South Africa in October, so he could bring it to me then.

With CACHES, I have been helping out with daily lesson planning and daily activities with the kids. I have some ideas on how to help them improve their activities, which may include an Informal Education training and a Child Education / Development training. I gave an impromptu pet lesson to the kids the other day when I brought Xima and Mel to work. The kids warmed up to the dogs very quickly, and spent the whole afternoon petting them and leading them around on leashes. I explained that dogs only bite if provoked and that if treated well, they can be very loyal and friendly. By the end of the day, the kids were fighting over who got to hold the leash next. These may seem like small steps, but they’re so necessary!

Loving my life and my work :)

The Boob Tree

In Mozambique, there exists a type of tree that bears bulbous, inedible gray fruit resembling dusty pomegranates. At first sight, the tree appears almost as if it were desiccated by a giant wildfire that left on its gnarled branches fragile gray paper lanterns or delicate bird nests ready to disintegrate with a single touch.

In olden days, late-blooming young Mozambican girls would kneel beneath the tree and lament their lack of breasts, in the hopes that the tree would receive their tears and prayers and grant them boobs at last.

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I encountered the tree one day while accompanying Tsembeka activists on home visits in another bairro of Chicumbane, and I almost entirely missed the strange formation lodged between two vibrant lemon trees because I was so focused on not stepping in mud puddles. It had just rained for six days straight and the sandy roads were essentially mush under my feet. The telltale hoof prints and fresh cow patties everywhere testified to the cow herders’ morning trek to the grazing fields. My life is cheia (full) with “Ah, I’m in Africa” moments.

While asking a tree for boobs might seem strange to us foreigners (I thought at first that the activists were messing with me and making up some outlandish story to answer my question about what type of tree it was), I am reminded that there’s a lot on this continent that doesn’t mesh perfectly with my American ideas of what is “normal” and “right.”

For example, in rural areas of Mozambique, the sick are more likely to turn to curandeiros (local witch doctors) than go to the hospital. Sometimes the reasons are distance and convenience; hospitals can be located many kilometers away while the curandeiro may live just a few streets down. Sometimes it’s mistrust; the nature of diseases such as HIV/AIDS, and the range of technical terms and complicated practices used by health workers makes the subject of health a difficult one to understand. People would rather receive a simple cure (“Here, drink this tea”) than hear that they have to take X pills for Y amount of days or even (in the case of HIV/AIDS) for the rest of their lives.

My organization Tsembeka does two types of home visits: the basic one, in which they check in with HIV+ patients and their families, make sure the sick are adhering to treatment, give hospital referrals, etc. The second kind of home visit is called an “Active Search,” in which the hospital reports that the HIV+ patient has stopped showing up to appointments and stopped picking up their meds, which indicates that they have abandoned their treatment, and the activists go to this person’s house to look for them and see what’s going on. This is actually very common, because people will stop taking their medicine once they start to feel better. This is dangerous not only because it’s misleading (as you know, HIV is incurable) and the patient will eventually fall sick again, but the disease also builds drug resistance making treatment less effective.

At one house we visited, an old man was laying on the ground outside. He was obviously frail and sick but the activists confided to me that he refused to go to the hospital. “I’d rather die here at home,” He kept saying to them. There was nothing they could do, short of dragging him to see the doctor (and give him to opportunity to then blame his poor health on the hospital treatments). Fortunately, one of the young boys living with the family was adhering well to his treatment and was doing well. At another house we stopped by, the patient, who had abandoned his treatment for some time now, had just fugir-ed (escaped) from the yard when we arrived, presumably because he didn’t want to talk to the activists. His elderly mother regretfully told us that they had tried everything to get him to go back to the hospital, but he just didn’t want to.

All in all, the activists and I visited five families that day (and would probably have completed more, had it not been dreary and rainy) and at each house, I received the short version of a complicated story. Family structure is convoluted in Mozambique. There is no “nuclear family” ; everybody lives under the same roof, extended family included. A child may be sent to live with another relative for any number of reasons (parent dies, or cannot provide for the child, or doesn’t want to take care of the child) so oftentimes it can’t be assumed that the kids that greet you in the yard are directly related to the tenants of the house, or even… live there.

I was also with a Peace Corps trainee, Jasmin, and while the families and activists conversed in Changana, we talked quietly amongst ourselves tried to guess the family relations- who was the mother of whom, how old each person was. At one house one of the activists, Luisa, beckoned over a girl that looked about 15, with a baby on her back, and explained to us that this baby was the girl’s second child. “A child having a child, can you believe it?” Luisa shook her head disgustedly and chided the girl for not dressing her children warmly in accordance with the weather. Luisa then took the girl’s hospital card (signed off every time the patient goes to the hospital) and told her that she has to come pick it up at the Tsembeka office when she attends the HIV+ mothers support group, where they learn about child nutrition and how to make nutritional porridge for young children. I found this kind of a strange tactic- bullying people into attending support groups, even if it is for their own good.

The next house was a similar story. The three older activists severely scolded a group of adolescents for not taking their toddler to the hospital. “The mother refuses to take her child to the hospital even though the kid is clearly malnourished and anemic. She keeps saying that she will go tomorrow but never does,” was the explanation I was given by an activist, whose voice was filled with scorn and disapproval for the mother. No adult was present at the house and I wasn’t quite sure if one of the young girls (who all looked maybe 12, or younger) was the mother that they were referring to, or if the mother of the toddler was an adult who happened to be absent. Child-headed households are apparently very common.

I noted that almost half the families we saw had multiple family members who were sick, and that all the houses we stopped by that day were within one block of each other. So many sick in such a small area? I wonder then if this is an anomalous neighborhood, or if maybe I am just oblivious to the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in my community.

Send Me On My Way

I took a somewhat spontaneous trip to Namaacha this week to visit my host family and to meet the new training group MOZ 16. The last time I was there, in March, everything was beautifully lush and green. This time around, with the onset of winter, everything looked dead and gnarled and brown, to the point that I almost didn’t recognize some of the streets I was walking on.

The moment I stepped out of the chapa I was greeted with a chilly wind that threw dust in my eyes as I hiked the lonely road to my family’s house. No one was there to greet me except for my host sister Lilita; everyone else was at work or school. I sat in the living room and watched Brazilian soap operas (Brazilian Portuguese is significantly different than Mozambican Portuguese, by the way. My head started to hurt from so much concentration) until Tiffanie, the current trainee living there, came home for lunch. I’d talked to her several times over the phone so it was great to finally meet her face to face.

I met a number of other trainees during the day and shamelessly promoted Xima’s puppies. (Did I mention that she is pregnant? I am the mother of a pregnant teenager- Where did I go wrong??) My favorite dressmaker completed two dresses and a pair of shorts in just a matter of hours, and I stocked up on no less than seven capulanas from the market before heading back to site.

The trip home was decent, which is saying a lot because usually traveling in Moz is a huge pain in the ass. On the way from Chicumbane to Maputo, I had one of those “Oh my God I’m going to die in a chapa” moments that has, since my arrival in October, become increasingly rare. I’ve accepted that seatbelts are almost unheard of, and that almost every driver on the road is a reckless one. This time, however, the chapa driver was too impatient to sit in Maputo traffic, so he decided to cross the concrete divider and suddenly we were facing two lines of oncoming traffic. Several cars, including a police vehicle, swerved into the second lane to avoid us. I still haven’t quite figured out what the police do around here, or if there are such things as traffic laws. Anyway, the concrete divider didn’t break for some time, so our chapa kept swimming upstream and although everyone in the chapa seemed alert, I’m pretty sure I was the only one with my hand over my mouth trying not to scream.

I arrived at the Junta, the giant chapa stop out of Maputo, after snagging a boleia out of Namaacha, and boarded a XaiXai chapa. Three hours later, we were still waiting for the car to fill up so we could go. Unfortunately, when it comes to chapa-ing, 24 people in a minibus is the absolute minimum. While I sat in the front seat and waved away vendors coming to my window, selling everything from toothbrushes, to jewelry, to potato chips, to sneakers and capulanas, I considered asking for my money back from the cobrador so that I could get on another chapa. I have never seen this done, even when everyone on the chapa is visibly frustrated. I wondered if batting my eyelashes and asking nicely would do the trick, but also considered the probability that since I’d already handed over the money, the only way I’d get it back would be to pry it from the cobrador’s cold, dead hands.

The day following my return to Chicumbane was a rainy one, so I decided not to go to work. (Don’t you wish your schedule were quite so flexible?) I stayed inside and watched movies all day, accompanied by XimaXima who, as I’ve discovered, is terrified of getting wet. When I let her out, she climbed on top of a plastic chair, whining, and wouldn’t come down.

Recently, I suspected the presence of a rat in my house and asked my empregada to help me move around the furniture in the kitchen. Sure enough, something gray and furry dashed into the living room when we moved aside my cupboards. Armed with a rake and a giant stick, we pursued the rat but it disappeared under the fridge… where, I’m pretty sure, it found a safe haven by crawling up into the wires and motor. Disgusting.

I bought some rat poison at the market and sprinkled it over a slice of tomato (which, my guard assured me, would lure the rat out like fish for a cat) that I then slid under the fridge. The very next day, I almost stepped on a rat corpse in my kitchen. Success! Another dead rat was later found next to the fridge. Hopefully that takes care of the problem, but I’ve continued to leave out another poisoned tomato slice on my kitchen counter just in case.

Cooking in the evening is still a feat, due to the dimming of electricity. Sometimes I wonder if it would be faster to heat water if I held the pot over a candle...

The electricians came one evening (after failing to show up on the scheduled day) to change my credit machine but didn’t transfer my credit like they had promised me. So, this month, I not only had to pay for a new fuse, I needed to pay for electricity twice (3x my monthly budget for electricity).

It’s so frustrating how some things work around here. The cultural power distance is vast- I can’t just call up the chefe of electricity to complain about how I just got robbed of all my prepaid electricity credit. To reach him (and I have no doubt it’s a “him”), I’d have to go to the XaiXai office, talk to the next higher up, who would then talk to their boss, who might then bring it to the chefe… Unlike America, not just anyone can talk to anybody. You have to go through the proper channels and, in my opinion, it becomes too much of a hassle than it’s worth. Maybe that’s why they continue to get away with this crap.

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Thanks so much for your continued letters and packages! They really brighten up my day. The latest package I received included maple syrup, which I did not delay in using for French toast!

My updated wish list:

- Coloring books

- Simple watercolor set(s)

- Daily planner

- Dog flea meds

- Dog treats

- Scented candles

Next week... More details on my work in Chicumbane and current projects, July conferences, and hosting a MOZ16 site visit! Stay tuned!

Five Nights of Candlelight

PART I: An enlightening conversation

The Characters:
PCV
Empregada

Setting:
PCV’s house, Chicumbane

PCV: How many kilos of meat did you buy for the dogs?

Empregada: Just one. That’s all they had. I’ll have to go back tomorrow, but I need more money for transport

PCV: So… It’s costing me more to send you to buy dog food than to actually buy the dog food. Okay, fine. Can I have my change back? It should be 175 mts.

Empregada: Yeah, except I used three mets.

PCV: … Fine. Anyway, the past couple nights, the energy’s been going out right as it gets dark.

Empregada: It must be a problem with one of the wires. This whole block doesn’t have electricity. The electricity people probably don’t know.

PCV: So should I call somebody about this?

Empregada: (shrugs) It happens.

PART II: A day trip to the market

The characters:
PCV
Xai Xai market vendors

PCV: How much does this sweatshirt cost?

Vendor 1: 500 mets.

PCV: Okay. Thanks. I’m just looking.

Vendor 1: I’ll give you a discount.

PCV: It’s okay. I don’t really like the design.

Vendor 1: Why not?

PCV: I just… don’t?

Vendor 2: Come look at sweatshirts over here at my stall!

PCV: Aren’t these sweatshirts for men?

Vendor 2: No, you can wear them too. 600 mets.

PCV: I’m good. Thanks though.

Vendor 3: (grabs PCV’s arm) Hey white person! Do you see this sweatshirt I have? Do you see? Do you see?

PCV: Yeah. I see.

Vendor 3: Buy it!

PCV: (shakes arm free) No, I don’t like it.

Vendor 3: (laughing) She doesn’t like it!

(mocking, in a high pitched voice as PCV walks away) I don’t like it! I don’t like it!

PCV: (turns around) Why should I buy something that I don’t even like?

Vendor 3: You don’t like anything!

15 minutes later…

(PCV walking back with a different purchased sweatshirt in hand)

Vendor 1: You bought this but you didn’t buy my sweatshirt! They’re the same!

PCV: No, not really.

Vendor 1: What’s the difference?

PCV: Design? Price?

Vendor 1: Look, I’ll give you a good price. 400 mets. Buy it.

PCV: Seriously? I don’t need two sweatshirts.

Vendor 1: So you’re not going to buy anything from me?

PCV: Nope, not this time.

PART III: Demanding answers

The characters:
PCV
Electricity chefe

Setting: In an office in front of the electricity towers, which are behind a barbed wire fence manned by a guard. A man sits at a desk in a room barren save for a wall of switches and dials. He is reading a newspaper.

PCV: Good afternoon. My house hasn’t had electricity in about two days. Can you send someone to fix this?

Chefe: Where do you live?

PCV: Neighborhood one.

Chefe: Where in neighborhood one?

PCV: …

Chefe: Where is your house located?

PCV: In the middle of the neighborhood. I don’t know how to describe it.

Chefe: What are your neighbors’ names?

PCV: I’m not…sure which neighbors you are referring to. I don’t know their full names.

Chefe: (sighing patiently) Then how are we supposed to find your house?

PCV: … (Thinking: Maybe a home address system would work?)

Chefe: Well, I don’t deal with that problem anyway. Here, I’ll give you a number to call.

PARTI IV: Charcoal Stove

The characters:
PCV
Old man selling bread

Setting: Chicumbane market stall, where the old man sits on his chair smoking a cigarette, colorful capulanas hanging up behind him and two big bags of bread at his feet.

PCV: Hi, sir.

Old Man: There you are! You haven’t come by in days! How are you, my daughter?

PCV: (sighing) A little irritated. The power’s been out at my house for two days now.

Old Man: (clucking sympathetically) At my house too.

PCV: Why am I paying for electricity when I can’t even use it when I need it? I have an electric stove. I can’t even cook today!

Old Man: You must learn to cook with charcoal!

PCV: (groan)

Old Man: I will teach you.

PCV: Thanks. I’ll give you a call if it comes to that. How much is bread today?

Old Man: 7 mets.

PCV: Oops, I don’t think I have small change.

Old Man: That’s okay. Just take it and come by to pay for it tomorrow.

PCV: Thank you.

PART VI: Four Nights of Watching Candles Burn

Characters:
PCV
Next door neighbor

Setting: PCV’s house

(Darkness. Phone ringing.)

Man’s voice: Hello.

PVC: Um, hello. This is the fourth night in a row my electricity has gone out right as it gets dark. Can you tell me what’s going on?

Man’s voice: Where do you live?

PCV: Bairro 1, Chicumbane.

Man’s voice: (bored tone) We’re working on it.

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Neighbor: What’s up with our energy?

PCV: I know! It went out on me tonight as I was cooking.

Neighbor: Me too! It’s dark in my kitchen. I can’t see anything.

PCV: I have an electric stove so I can’t even cook, and I’m starving.

Neighbor: We’re going to have to start eating our sweatshirts and capulanas if this keeps up. I sent my daughter to go buy some bread, but she came back empty-handed. Everyone at the market’s already gone home. (sigh) I can’t let her go hungry. I’ll have to cook in the dark, with firewood.

PCV: So strange, isn’t it? We always have electricity during the day… But once it hits 5 or 6pm, it goes out.

Neighbor: Yeah, and all our neighbors still have electricity.

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(Darkness. Phone ringing.)

Man’s voice: Hello.

PCV: Hi, I called a couple hours ago. Is someone working on this problem? Because I’m still sitting in the dark.

Man: Yeah, the electricity guys are currently working in XaiXai. They’ll be there soon.

PCV: Are you sure? I would really like to get this problem resolved tonight.

Man: Oh, you want it resolved tonight?

PCV: … (Thinking: No, I’ve been calling multiple times every night because I’d like you to fix my electricity next month.) Yeah. Tonight would be great.

Man: Yeah, they’ll be there soon.

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Neighbor: Hello! I brought you some rice and veggies! It’s not much but…

PCV: THANK YOU SO MUCH! I haven’t had a hot meal in days!

Neighbor: No problem.

PCV: The power doesn’t look like it’s going to come back on anytime soon. I’ll probably just go to sleep after this.

Neighbor: Might as well.

PART V:

On the fifth night without electricity, I have to go to a nearby neighbor’s house to ask them to finish boiling my spaghetti. (It's apparent they still have electricity because they are still blasting extremely loud music.) Something strange happens in the 30 minutes that the spaghetti sits in lukewarm water, because the two handfuls of dry spaghetti I cook produces only a small lump of thin noodles. I think my noodles dissolved, as has my patience with this situation.

At this point, the electricity operator is no longer picking up my phone calls.

PART VI: On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Electricity!

My guard Senhor Moniz, who reminds me of a chatty old grandfather, comes by at 8am to accompany me to the electricity office (once again). The same man I talked with at the beginning of the week jovially asks me if I have problems with my electricity again. Again? I haven’t stopped having problems. He says regretfully, they have already tried to resolve the problem. I’ll have to go to the main XaiXai office.

Sr. Moniz and I jump on a chapa to XaiXai. We explain the problem (for the past five nights, the electricity has gone out right at dusk and stays off until around 10pm or later) to the chefe, who asks where exactly I live in Chicumbane. The problem of explaining my house once again arises, except that this time, the people we’re explaining to aren’t from Chicumbane and have no idea who “Suzanna Mati” or “Salvador Malate,” my closest neighbors, are. Sr Moniz does all the talking and, when it’s apparent the electricity guys don’t understand his directions, the three grown men in suits are forced to pick up sticks and draw maps in the sand.

“Okay,” The electricity guys say. “We understand now. We’ll be there soon.” “Soon as in when?” I ask, because after repeated reassurances of “Yes, someone’s working on your problem” over the phone, I’m a bit wary of Mozambican time estimates. We arrange to meet at the pontinha (bridge) in half an hour to go to Chicumbane together. I finish my errands with Sr Moniz and wait for an hour and a half at the pontinha before the electricians arrive in their car.

“Your machine is broken,” They report after doing a quick examination of my fuse box and credit machine. “How is it broken?” I ask. “It’s still deducting money from me, even though I never have electricity.” (I’m grateful for Sr. Moniz’s presence, to defuse my frustration and my rude comments.) “One of your fuses is out too. You’ll have to buy a new one at the market and find someone to put it in for you. We’ll have to change your machine too but since today is Friday… You’ll either have only 5 kilowatts on the new machine for the whole weekend, or we’ll have to come back next week to change it.”

“Can’t you transfer my electricity credit to the new machine?”

“No.”

“So… I just paid 200 mets of credit last week for nothing. Or I have to live with this problem for a month until I finish all my credit.”

I’m about to cry, and the electricians look uncomfortable. Sr Moniz steps in. “She had to go to the neighbor’s house to cook dinner last night,” He says as if this explains everything.

“Oh. Electric stove?” One guy asks.

“Yup.”

The electricity guys go outside for a quick meeting and come back beaming, with a new fuse in hand. “We had this in the car. This will make sure your power doesn’t irregularly go off.”

The other guy is doing something with the supposedly broken credit machine. “I’m going to give you a freebie…” He sighs, almost reluctant. “Since I don’t work Monday or Tuesday, I’ll have to come back Wednesday to change our your machine. In the meantime, I’m setting this one so that it doesn’t deduct your credit.” So I go from no electricity to free/consistent electricity… Until Wednesday at least. I’m suddenly happier than I have been in…hmm… five days.

It’s now 6:30pm. I’m at half wattage, my lights are dim, and it’s taken me 30 minutes to unsuccessfully make popcorn (I’m pretty sure I’m just warming the unpopped kernels) but HEY! Life’s good!