It’s off. No, it’s back on. Wait. Oh, it’s off again.

Water. Electricity. Electricity. Water. It’s a never-ending frustration. The last few weeks have been just hell on the utility front. Water has by far been the worst, with regular outages that last as long as two days. We just can’t seem to get caught up on our laundry because of it, and I am definitely leaning (practically falling over if you want the truth) towards getting a huge stack of paper plates. To hell with the trees and those tree huggers! Our two water barrels outside can only go so far, and I am judicious in allotting it for frivolous uses. “You want to wash your face? Let me look at ya. Ah, it’s not too bad, just let me spit on this tissue and wipe you down.” Oh, yeah, the kids love the rationing. NOT.

I’ve said it before: I love my showers and having the soles of my feet being cleansed of grit, sand and dust. When the weather is this hot, I may shower three or even four times a day, just to rinse off the sweat. (TMI? Sorry.) Ah, you’re wondering if we’re in a drought or something, right? Nope. This is the start of the rainy season, and it has been raining fairly consistently. As far as I know, the Weija and Kpong reservoirs are pretty full, thank you very much. Granted, there’s always a problem with the water lines and mains; they are old and gradually being replaced. But, no, the problem is that the workers of the recently privatized company that runs Ghana’s water system (Aqua Vitens) are having a work slow down. It’s not a Mother Nature issue. It’s a labor issue.

Here’s my opinion: Forget the mediation. Forget the arbitration. Give them whatever they want, for crying out loud. Now!

Oh, if only it were that easy.

Now, as for the electricity... who the hell knows what is going on? Every night, for the past several days, the electricity has been off, sometimes during the day, but more often at night. And when it is off, it generally stays off for between 30 minutes and 2 hours. Coincidentally, the night time outages always seem to occur during the hours when the children are propped up in front of the television watching the Bernie Mack show or Friends. They think it’s a conspiracy. Me, I think it’s just typical government ineptitude. It doesn’t matter whether the NPP or the NDC is in power; the little people are the ones getting screwed. I accept that the government has every right to screw their people. I’m an American, I’ve been screwed (we call it taxes, over there) so I’m not against getting screwed, in principle. I just want to be forewarned that I’m going to be screwed. This way I can prepare for it.

Are we doing load shedding again? I have no idea. They used to publish the dam levels in the local newspaper every day, but stopped when we were out of the danger zone. So, I’d assume that we’re still out of the danger zone. The most recent level I saw (on April 19th) was 10” below the maximum and 10” above the minimum water level. Seems to me we’re pretty okey dokey as far as water levels are concerned.

The load shedding issue was not fun, and a lot of people still have bad memories and continue to point fingers at the NPP administration which was in power then. Usually, those fingers were on the hands of a NDC person. So, you got to wonder, what do the NDC people say about this latest foray into load shedding (albeit “unofficial”), now that it’s happening on their watch? So far, there’s been no comment.

We’ve learned that when “lights off” happens at night, you may as well just give up all of hope of it being a momentary thing and go to bed. Sleep doesn’t come easy. So it’s best to just lie there and sweat in the heat until you become a puddle. Then get up and have a shower. Oh, wait a minute. I forgot. The water’s off, too. Shit.


ETA… I guess Vodaphone didn’t want to be left out; my internet connection has now been off for nearly 24 hours. Oh happy day.