Sketchy Electricity

Workmanship here would generally fall into the category of shoddy if graded by USA standards. This is particularly scary in the electrical field. Copper from live wires stripped of their plastic insulation protrude into everyday life everywhere, including our own home, although we’ve tried to cover any potentially life threatening hazards within casual touching range. In just our first month in site one of our three-pronged South African sockets into which our landlord had jammed one of our two pronged European type extension cords spontaneously started on fire, leaving us with only two functioning electric outlets in the entire house. Currently we cannot turn our porch light on because the plastic light switch fell off one night. Even when we could turn it on we would have to rotate the bulb until we got its orientation just right for it to glow. Half the time we leave our cell phones to charge we come back after an hour with still no juice in the battery because the plug shifted slightly in our absence. We’re constantly charging batteries to use when the power’s out for various American gadgets such as our headlamps, ipod speakers, ipod, e-reader, cell phone, camera, etc. Our fan only works when its plug is left at about a 45° angle and it can’t get going on its own with the weak night time power, so we have to jump start it by manually rotating the blades until the motor takes over. In the evening time, or whenever we turn our stove on, the lights dim to just below what’s desired for reading comfortably. We can only operate our laptop or any other type of sensitive electronics with a voltage stabilizer, and even then it’s not 100% safe, as testified by the fried hardware in our school computers (we’re down to just 4 from the 7 computers we started with last year). We thought the computer lab AC had been fried last month while we were still in hot season, but it was just that the tape holding the circuit breaker closed had fallen off. Since there are no real electricians in town, our school recruits the physics teacher for any electrical work. This was great last year when we had Nazare, who specialized in electricity, but this year’s group of physics teachers really struggles keeping our school wired, which is essential for the adult students who study at night. But at least we have electricity, and it’s been much more reliable this year, even though it did go out last night in the middle of cooking spaghetti dinner.