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.