Some thoughts on rain, electricity, and security

*This blog post was written a long while ago, but internet problems kept it from posting correctly. Sorry!*

Welcome to the rainy season! I’m finally detecting a slight drop in temperature and enjoying the great cooling rain showers that come almost every day. It’s wonderful. I was a little worried before we came that the rain season would mean great flooding monsoons, but here the showers are sometimes intense, but the sun comes out to dry up the puddles eventually. I really love the heavy rainfall that comes in sudden downpours, it makes such a nice musical sound. Sometimes the rain comes so suddenly, with very little warning, so I’ve learned not to hang the laundry outside (even if it looks nice and sunny). That’s ok, the bars on the insides of our windows make excellent drying racks.*

Everyone here is putting on sweaters, or wearing extra clothes, and actually shivering and complaining of catching colds. They get so concerned when I walk out in the rain to pick up Dante from school. All I can do is chuckle a little and try to describe what cold really is (my family remembers hauling wood in Alaskan winters…where the scarf in front of your face turns icy from the moisture in our breath.) There is nothing like cold in Ghana. But I guess if you are used to it always being 80-85 degrees, 75 would feel a little chilly.

Our electricity has been flickering a lot lately, and we’re getting really good at managing without power. I remember how nervous I was about not having consistent electricity before we came. I even attended a class on cooking without power. Here, the solution is very simple: everyone uses gas stoves. Then even if the power is out you can make a nice meal (as long as you cook it before the sun goes down, cooking in the dark is difficult). My oven is gas too, which was really hard for me to get used to at first. Gas ovens have a gas burner at the top of the oven and at the bottom, both of which you have to light to get an even heat (lighting the oven is not easy!), then monitor them closely, sometimes the flame dies even when the gas is still flowing, causing a bad smell and potential explosion. And then, there’s no temperature dial or gauge, so you just have to practice enough to not burn or undercook something.  This week I successfully baked some pies and my first sort of good batch of bread (sort of good means it wasn’t overly burned, and the inside has actually cooked through)! I felt pretty heroic; I’ve gotten past the first hurdles with my oven!

The power goes on and off and no one really knows why. During the dry season local Ghanaians explained that black outs were due to the low level of water in the Volta river, since almost all our electricity comes from the hydroelectric dam there. That reasoning made sense. But now it’s the rainy season and we’ve had plenty of rain, and the power still goes off pretty frequently… maybe the rain is knocking out the power? Either way, we’re blessed to have a generator for long blackouts and candles for short ones.

 Really, sometimes I like it when the power goes off in the evenings, or a sudden storm makes us run indoors. It feels very cozy to gather close around a candle and read or tell stories.  

It does get difficult to get real work done though. Everything kind of stops when the power goes out. That’s nice sometimes, when things have been too busy, but it gets old really fast when you have work you want to do. I wonder if that’s part of the reason progress is so difficult here.

*Yup, bars on the windows. All the windows. And not one, not two, but three locks on our front door. I used to think we were a little overboard with security here, but then Mom told me the story of when there were thieves breaking into their house. They called the local police station and the police told them, “Ok, sorry about that, come in tomorrow morning and file a police report.” If you want the police to come, you have to go pick them up!