Saturday, May 22, 2010

Electricity/Neighbor Problems (mostly a frustrated rant)

There's been a problem for a while with the electricity in my house. At least once a day, and sometimes more often, the breaker for the whole house (as well as the house next door) just switches off, for no discernible reason. I've had fundis (kind of like electricians) come to the house, and they can't find any shorts in my house, so it's almost certainly my next door neighbors' house. (We share the same breaker, but I'm the only one who can control it, since it's in my house.)

The problem is, my neighbors don't really understand this concept, that it's something they've plugged in that is probably causing the problem, and my Swahili isn't good enough to explain it. Why the fundis didn't explain it to them, I cannot imagine.

Now, sometimes when the breaker switches off, I can switch it back on. But sometimes it just flips right back down and the electricity won't come back on for hours. I'll keep trying, and it will keep not working. My neighbors also have this really annoying habit of knocking on my door and asking me to turn the electricity back on, like, do you really think I haven't been trying five times an hour since it turned off?!?!?! Honestly? Do you really, honestly not understand that I am in the dark too, I would like the electricity back on too, and I try the switch as often as makes any sort of logical sense?

Today one of them insisted on barging into my house to try for himself, even though he didn't even know which switch was which. Like, this has been a problem for months, and I've been turning it back on as soon as it would work for months. You have never done this once, and you insist on coming into my house to try just in case I'm suddenly doing it wrong? Then you note to me that on the switch that actually has nothing to do with the problem, it says “On.” Yes. Thank you. I noticed that, especially since it actually literally says “On” in English. Besides, that is not the switch that matters (although I have learned a trick using that switch that sometimes works, and I try that every time I try to get the electricity back on. Any anyway, that trick is just a way of trying to get the OTHER switch to stay up).

Not to mention that according to the man who came to check the electricity, the problem is almost CERTAINLY something YOU HAVE PLUGGED IN inside your house, and if you want to solve the problem, UNPLUG YOUR APPLIANCES!! They don't even turn off their sound system when the electricity goes off. I know this because the very exact moment I manage to make it switch back on, I hear the music start up next door. Like, the instant, way too quickly for one of them to have turned it on themselves.

I try to explain the parts of this I can, but I don't know if it's my Swahili or what, but this man seems to absolutely never understand me. He insists on speaking English to me, but his English is horrible-- way worse than my Swahili-- and never makes any sense. It is beyond frustrating, because he won't even speak a word of Swahili to me, and when I speak it he just looks at me blankly. Other people understand me when I speak Swahili, so why can't he? I don't think it's possible that he doesn't speak it.


Sigh. It's been going on for several months, and usually it doesn't really bother me that much. I mean, I can understand the impulse-- they're pretty powerless in the situation (no pun intended), and if I were in their shoes, I know that I would have the urge to go and check that the person has tried the lights, even if I know that logically they probably have. Of course, at this point, when the electricity obviously keeps coming back on week after week, I'd have managed to suppress that impulse so as not to annoy my neighbor, but I can still understand why they do it.

It's still annoying that they seem to think that I don't try the electricity often to turn it back on, and it was SUPER annoying the way that man thought that I didn't know how to do it (when he didn't know) even though that's the most illogical thing ever. But I'd mostly gotten over the annoyance and just accepted the whole thing pretty calmly. Usually I don't care much.


It's just that right now, the electricity still won't come back on, even though it's been at least seven hours. The batteries on my head lamp are running low-- rechargeable batteries lose their charge super quickly, did you know that? Even if you're not using them. If you charge your rechargeable batteries all the way up, and then a month later put them into a flashlight, they will not work at all. They only work, like, right after you charge them. So I basically have no source of light except this really weak (and getting weaker) headlamp. I've searched all over my house for batteries that might work in some sort of light source, and now have one other thing sort of going, but it's also really dim. So I'm really just annoyed as hell right now.

Normally I'd just go to bed in this situation, but since I've had some trouble sleeping the past few days, my sleep schedule is all out of whack, and I woke up at like 5 pm today. I wouldn't be able to fall asleep if I went to bed now, and my only sleep med-- Benedryl-- takes at least two hours to make me drowsy.

I've also talked to my school several times, and they did send those fundis to my house twice, but I've kept asking because the problem hasn't stopped, and they haven't done anything else.

Really, it's my neighbors' time to take over trying to fix things at this point, since it's been established that there's no short in my house. But they just WON'T DO IT! I don't get why they don't take some action themselves-- what would they have done seven months ago, when nobody lived in my house? Obviously they'd have called someone and tried to get it fixed.

You know, I don't even think I'm going to feel guilty at this point leaving them without electricity for three weeks when I visit America. I'm warning them that it's going to happen, and it's up to them to call people in to fix the problem before June 14. I've talked to the school like five times and gotten an “electrician” to come twice. They have done nothing at all, except come over to my house to bug me.



Sorry about this post that was almost entirely just an annoyed rant... I just really needed to get that off my chest. As I said in my post before last, "On the Nature, Criticism, and Attempt to Change Culture," sometimes you really do need to rage about stuff like this somewhere you can at least pretend someone is reading and understanding, so that when you're actually dealing with the people, you can manage to remain polite. I say all this stuff angrily here so that I can be calm and culturally sensitive when actually dealing with the neighbors.

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