Power Break
Two weeks ago I walked into the courtyard of the Department of Oceanography and Fisheries where all of the students for my class on Coastal Zone Management were gathered eating a kind of Ghanaian corn nut snack and plantain chips. George asked me if this was my first “power break”. I gave him a baffled look. I thought they were referring to all of the students sitting and chatting in the courtyard eating snack and that this was the Ghanaian equivalent of a “coffee break.” Really he was referring to the fact that the electricity was out, thus all of the lights in the classroom (as well as the aircon) were out, so everyone was hanging out in the courtyard for the natural light.
The level of Lake Volta is low this year and so there is a limited amount of hydroelectric power being generated and a system of rolling blackouts has been instigated across Accra. According to the radio, which several people have reported to me, the schedule for blackouts is 12 hours of power off during the day followed by 12 hours off at night 3 days later. Except that it didn’t seem to happen exactly that way.
At first I barely noticed the power-outs because they were all during the day. It was slightly annoying because then the free internet access in the International Student Office is down, but that is not the only thing that causes it to be down. The buildings are all built with two walls of windows to facilitate natural light for these kind of situations. And somehow, our power always seems to comeback on at 6pm when it is out during the day. Until last night. Well, half of the dorm came back on about 6:45, but the annex (where I live) did not. The computer lab in Volta Hall was working, but there was no light in my room. Since I am a creature of habit and I don’t like to change plans this was somewhat frustrating to me. I had planned to do some reading in my room and then I couldn’t, so I just went to bed instead.
I should probably head down to the Bush Canteen and get a kerosene lantern, but in reality I don’t find the power outages to be that big of a problem. Even when power was out in my dorm, the office building just outside my room was blaring its lights all night (as usual), and so there was plenty of ambient light to do all of my evening chores, just not enough to read, and I didn’t feel like using my laptop by battery in the semi-dark.
The report is that the university is on a different rolling outage where the academic buildings will get power M-F. The dorms are divided into three groups and we should expect to loose power every three days from 7 am to 6pm. However, this is not entirely accurate since the School of Business across the street always has power and we have had our power out all night.
Sometimes concurrent with and sometimes just because, the water also goes out. This causes more of a frustration to me. I keep two buckets of water in my room. And actually, I typically heat a bucket of water with my heating coil and use it to take a shower, so that is not a problem. It was confusing at first as to how to proceed. But now I have a setup on the balcony with a pitcher to use for washing my hands, and I can shower with about a gallon of water, but since I usually heat two I never feel a lack (although I avoid conditioning my hair with the quantity of water).
The main problem is that the toilets in the bathroom fill up and the room begins to smell after a day or two. The most recent water outage lasted almost 3 days, except that we had water for about 2 hours in the middle. Luckily, those women, who were up and around, made use of it to flush all of the toilets. The worst was last night when the power was out so the bathrooms were dark and the toilets were full, it made the bathrooms a scary destination.
If you don’t have enough water stored in your room it is possible to fill up your bucket from the polytanks in the courtyard. I think that it is possible to also fill the toilet tank from your bucket and although this is not the common practice I may take it up. I am typically too lazy to carry water upstairs from the polytanks, so I try and keep my buckets filled up when the water is on so that I am not caught off guard.
The power came back on at 5:30 this morning and the water shortly afterwards, so now I feel like I am back to normal. Even though it is possible to do everything by carrying water, I am lazy and I tend to put off things like mopping the floor and doing my laundry. So, this morning I mopped and this evening I will probably do laundry.
The level of Lake Volta is low this year and so there is a limited amount of hydroelectric power being generated and a system of rolling blackouts has been instigated across Accra. According to the radio, which several people have reported to me, the schedule for blackouts is 12 hours of power off during the day followed by 12 hours off at night 3 days later. Except that it didn’t seem to happen exactly that way.
At first I barely noticed the power-outs because they were all during the day. It was slightly annoying because then the free internet access in the International Student Office is down, but that is not the only thing that causes it to be down. The buildings are all built with two walls of windows to facilitate natural light for these kind of situations. And somehow, our power always seems to comeback on at 6pm when it is out during the day. Until last night. Well, half of the dorm came back on about 6:45, but the annex (where I live) did not. The computer lab in Volta Hall was working, but there was no light in my room. Since I am a creature of habit and I don’t like to change plans this was somewhat frustrating to me. I had planned to do some reading in my room and then I couldn’t, so I just went to bed instead.
I should probably head down to the Bush Canteen and get a kerosene lantern, but in reality I don’t find the power outages to be that big of a problem. Even when power was out in my dorm, the office building just outside my room was blaring its lights all night (as usual), and so there was plenty of ambient light to do all of my evening chores, just not enough to read, and I didn’t feel like using my laptop by battery in the semi-dark.
The report is that the university is on a different rolling outage where the academic buildings will get power M-F. The dorms are divided into three groups and we should expect to loose power every three days from 7 am to 6pm. However, this is not entirely accurate since the School of Business across the street always has power and we have had our power out all night.
Sometimes concurrent with and sometimes just because, the water also goes out. This causes more of a frustration to me. I keep two buckets of water in my room. And actually, I typically heat a bucket of water with my heating coil and use it to take a shower, so that is not a problem. It was confusing at first as to how to proceed. But now I have a setup on the balcony with a pitcher to use for washing my hands, and I can shower with about a gallon of water, but since I usually heat two I never feel a lack (although I avoid conditioning my hair with the quantity of water).
The main problem is that the toilets in the bathroom fill up and the room begins to smell after a day or two. The most recent water outage lasted almost 3 days, except that we had water for about 2 hours in the middle. Luckily, those women, who were up and around, made use of it to flush all of the toilets. The worst was last night when the power was out so the bathrooms were dark and the toilets were full, it made the bathrooms a scary destination.
If you don’t have enough water stored in your room it is possible to fill up your bucket from the polytanks in the courtyard. I think that it is possible to also fill the toilet tank from your bucket and although this is not the common practice I may take it up. I am typically too lazy to carry water upstairs from the polytanks, so I try and keep my buckets filled up when the water is on so that I am not caught off guard.
The power came back on at 5:30 this morning and the water shortly afterwards, so now I feel like I am back to normal. Even though it is possible to do everything by carrying water, I am lazy and I tend to put off things like mopping the floor and doing my laundry. So, this morning I mopped and this evening I will probably do laundry.
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