While Seba was in Kisangani taking Cleve to his flight, we decided it was time to stop mucking about with old, crappy equipment.
One of the few luxuries we keep here is electricity -- usually not nightly but it is certainly our biggest expense. A litre of gas is 1400 FC - approximately $3. We buy 2-3 litres per each use, costing us anywhere between $6 and $10. Considering that all of our food each day, together, is less than $10, it’s fair to say that gas is exorbitantly expensive.
Mais, l’essence est essential.
Our generator makes a buzzing sound that drowns out most other noises in the night, including, unfortunately, most music and television shows we attempt to watch.
But to be able to watch anything is excellent, and certainly it gives us a bit of respite.
What is not relaxing is being excited to use the computer, and have some inscrutable problem pop up that Seba, our resident mechanic, is unable to fix on the fly.
One shouldn’t wonder that things aren’t working; instead, one should be amazed that things work at ALL! I’ve mentioned before our precarious setup, stringing ancient frazzled wires to and fro and tying them together with little ripped pieces of plastic bags.
Now, however, we have a NEW electricity stabilizer, a NEW generator, and (thanks to Hans and Victor!) two new chargers for my computer to replace the ones the old stabilizer fried to bits.
I did a little “Nous avons de courant” dance earlier this evening, before unforeseen errors caused a maddening delay though, obviously, it was resolved.
Coming back to my computer and having it boot up felt like visiting an old friend... I finally got to offload the many photos from my memory sticks as well, and just getting to revisit the last week in photos was a reward in and of itself!
Electricity is great! Yay!
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