Sunday, April 24, 2011

Power Outage


Thursday, Amazon had its downtime, but we had our own power outage for the past two days.


It all started on Saturday evening with massive wind and continuous raining, an appetizer for the coming raining season. When the wind blows hard, the local electricity company cuts off the power to prevent the cables from touching each other, causing a short circuit.

So when the light went out, we were not surprised and informed our customers that it normally comes back on within a few minutes after the wind has calmed down. But minutes became hours and we all got a bit worried. We made some visits to our neighbours to see whether it was a personal problem, but no, the whole southern part of Tamale was without electricity.

The darkness itself can be solved with some candles, the fan is not needed in the rooms as the temperature has come down because of the rain and the lack of music in the restaurant is filled with nice chatting and further socializing with friends-to-be.

The night was calm, I do enjoy the sound of rain on a tin roof while I am lying comfortably in my own bed, sheltered from the weather conditions. But the following morning, still no light had come. We were getting quite worried, it was a weekend off, could it be that the VRA would let us down and is just celebrating the Easter holidays while leaving us in the dark? I couldn't imagine.

On top of that, our overhead water tank was now empty and without electricity we couldn't spark the pump to fill it again. In one word: disaster for a hotel that wants to take care of its guests. We carried containers of water up and down so that everybody could take a 'bucket shower'.

People traveling from Mole to Tamale informed us that more south, poles were blown to the ground, disrupting the electricity flow, and swarms of VRA-technicians were working on it, day and night.

Luckily, before dusk the lights came back on. Happy as a child, we sparked the water pomp again and checked all the rooms whether there were no taps left open. The low humming of the machine sounded like music in my ear and finally the kitchen, the waitering and also the cleaners could do their work in a proper way again, the lodge was back online!

2 comments:

  1. When I moved from the northern part of the United States to Texas (in the south), I was advised to have a worst-case-scenario kit made with enough food. water, and other various supples for a week, in case storms or tornadoes decided to knock us back 200 years by ripping up the power-lines.

    Best investment I ever made.

    Living like they did 200 years ago, I understand why so many wars were fought; there's work, and there's boredom. Or we can attack that other country on the right...

    ReplyDelete
  2. :-) interesting way of looking at it, thanks for the comment!

    ReplyDelete

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