All in a day's work in Sao Tome and Principe

It’s a wonder we get any work done at all in this country. When it’s not an internet connectivity problem (there’s only one provider in the country, so there’s no competitive incentive to give good service) it’s an electricity problem (again, only one provider – do you see a pattern here?). Last week we had the great misfortune of our generator breaking down at precisely the same moment as the worst city-provided power outage in history (well, at least the history since we’ve been here). Normally, we get power from the city electric grid for 12 to 16 hours a day, and when that fails us, our own ADRA generator serves as a backup, providing us with our own mini power plant.

Of course, this coincidental misfortune occurred right when we had two important deadlines to meet: the uploading of a proposal for a competition, and the drafting and printing of a letter for a visa application for an upcoming international trip. Without electricity from either of our usual two sources, laptop batteries died within hours, backup power supplies ran out of residual charge, and machines with no backup power (printers, internet routers) fell dead. Work in the office ground to a complete standstill. Upstairs in our house (within the same compound), food in the refrigerator slowly decayed, and with no air conditioning, household temperatures climbed to match the heat outside (thankfully it isn’t extremely hot at this time of year).

For over 24 hours, we had no electricity whatsoever, and counting over a 48-hour period, we had only about 5 hours of power. Our calls to our generator supplier (it is still under warranty) were to no avail, as they said that all of their technicians were occupied at other addresses, dealing with other generators on the fritz. What to do? Deadlines must be met, but options were limited. This is where ingenuity really shines in overseas living. Thankfully I had brought a power inverter from the United States, which plugs into the car’s cigarette lighter and converts 12-volt car battery power into 120-volt AC power to run whatever appliances you plug into them. I temporarily moved my office out to the car, plugged in my laptop (to charge it, but also work on it), and hooked up one of our office printers on the passenger seat. With this setup, I was able to type and print the visa application letter on beautiful letterhead that did not betray whatsoever the herculean efforts required to produce it.

Uploading the proposal proved slightly more tricky. I cannot park our car close enough to the building to connect the internet router to it, so there is no way to power the router and gain access to the outside world. After charging my laptop in the car, I drove to a nearby hotel with wireless internet signal leaking out to the parking lot and lobby. This hotel runs their own satellite internet access which bypasses the notoriously unreliable national internet service provider, and I have used their free wireless access in the past to circumvent our own internet difficulties. Alas, the hotel has since secured their wireless signal and only provides the access code to clients who are spending the night. At this point, it was 10:00 p.m., and I was exhausted from having already tried to jury-rig my way through one day without power. I drove home in defeat, knowing that there were probably other methods at my disposal, but having neither the energy nor the heart to chase them down, since none of them would be easy at all. I just figured that we’d have to accede defeat in this case, and hope for more opportunities in the future when conditions were better.

I flopped into bed with a sigh, said a prayer for this country, and let my mind relax and decompress from the stressful day. Then, in the silence of entering dreamworld, a brilliant solution popped into my mind. I remembered that although we had run down our office backup power supplies during the day, hoping that power would come back before they completely ran out (didn’t happen), we had turned off our only household backup power supply as soon as the power had gone out. The battery probably still had some charge left! I quickly leaped out of bed and silently grabbed the backup power supply unit and took it downstairs to my office. Turning it on (running on internal batter power, of course), I hooked the internet router up to it and connected my laptop to the router. There was a signal! Working quickly (since I had no idea how much time was left on the backup power supply’s battery), I navigated to the correct webpage, filled in the necessary information, then clicked on “Upload Your Documents.” Waiting with bated breath to see if the upload would succeed before the backup power supply’s battery died, I prayed and prayed that it would work. Success! I had met the midnight deadline, and wouldn’t have to write off this opportunity!

All in a day’s work in Sao Tome and Principe.

Bushwhacking!

ADRA owns a plot of land in the jungle of Caué District.  It was bought many years ago to be a sort of experimental research farm, but has lain dormant for several years now.  We're still holding onto it because we know that one of these days, we'll figure out what to do with it.  But for the moment, it just sits there, slowly getting overgrown and maturing into a full rainforest.  We have a guard who lives there and keeps an eye out on the property, but we were starting to get reports of illegal logging and harvesting on our land.  So one day in February, I went there with some of our staff (who already know the lay of the land), and we hiked the perimeter of the plot, hacking our way with machetes part of the time, walking on dirt roads some of the time, and sweating buckets the whole time!  It is absolutely beautiful territory, complete with a scenic cliff overlook, waterfalls, and black cobras all around.  Thankfully on our hike, we didn't come across any cobras, but we did come across evidence of illegal logging and fruit harvesting.  Either our guard is not on duty much of the time, he's too old to hear the chainsaws, or he's complicit with the activities.  Not sure what we're going to do about it, as guards willing to live out there in the lonely woods are hard to come by.  Perhaps we'll turn our land into an ecotourism trekking ground and make some money off of it that way -- without having to introduce any kind of labor-intensive industry!

Our Container Arrives!

Our long-awaited shipping container arrived in port in mid-January!  We are, of course, elated.  Up to this moment, we still have not finished unpacking and assembling everything, but our house is looking a lot better already.  As Kristi said, "I forgot what comfort looked like.  I was starting to think that we were being extravagant getting a shipping container, but now that we have some comfort items from home, I'm realizing what a mood lifter it is!"

As we did not have enough items to fill an entire shipping container (the director's house is partially furnished), our goods were loaded into giant wooden crates so that they wouldn't bang around inside the container in transit.  The port officials were kind enough to be convinced to come to our house for the opening and inspection of the crates, which eliminated the cringing spectre of half-open cardboard boxes strewn all over a truck bed being paraded through town.

So now, our house is covered in an ever-diminishing stack of boxes.  The kids are getting tired of every weekend being filled with daddy assembling furniture, but they're a very patient lot!  As soon as it's all done being set up, I'll post some more pictures.