I must have mentioned previously that here in Ghana, rationing of water and electricity (load shedding) on most areas are a normal occurrence. Just by good luck, the area of Tamale that I live in doesn’t have scheduled load-shedding nor it has the rationing of tap-water. But this luxury comes at a very heavy price, as I have recently found out - you never know when the electricity supply is cut (and usually the availability of tap-water follows the pattern of electricity supply). Since there is no scheduled load-shedding in the area I live in, when the lights go off, its the “general lights off” as is known here, and it means the whole town is without electricity!
Anyway, coming back to the “heavy price” of this uncertain supply (or more appropriately, the uncertain cut-off) of electricity, I found out what happens to a laptop battery when you have all sorts of power-hungry devices (mostly the USB plug-and-play devices such as external hard drives) are plugged in and the mains power is suddenly cut off - my laptop battery just went dead! It actually happened a couple of weeks ago. I was burning some pictures from my external HD that requires mains power to a CD on my laptop, and suddenly the mains power was off. As soon as the external HD shut off, my computer went dead. Nothing I did to make it come back worked. The power indicator on the battery showed that it was fully charged, but none was getting through to the computer. I thought my laptop HD was gone, which meant a disaster, for I hadn’t backed-up my system (which I do at least once every couple of months normally) since I came to Ghana. I do update the copy of “Documents” on external HD every week or so, so I wasn’t too worried about losing much of my recent work.
Continue reading ‘lights off…lights on…’
Got an email from my brother (last week actually) - he was over the moon after passing his finals - he has become a doctor now - the one who treats people - and not the kind that I am trying to be!! In fact, I feel more and more vindicated in my choice of the field of study now that among us five siblings, we have a doctor, a nurse, an engineer, and a physicist - and the odd one out - me - a social scientist! And honestly, I wouldn’t even know how to specify my area of expertise other than generally say I’m a social scientist. Anyway, a very good news from home in a week of not-much-progress (typical week) in Ghana. I am eating well, sleeping well, and trying to work well with not much success, and that sums up my time in Ghana so far. Too much to complain about but am afraid of acting like a “yankee-nepali lad” so will keep them to myself.
But then I have to tell you this. I was in the kitchen, preparing dinner earlier this week when Habiba, the lady who does my laundry and house-cleaning, came around with a younger girl - all stressed. She then started telling me the reason. The younger girl’s niece - a 3-year old girl - had got lost earlier that morning, and a good Samaritan apparently took her to a local radio station. They only found out where she was after hearing an announcement on the radio about the missing girl. Now they had to go and get her back from the station. She then told me that the radio station charged 25000 cedis (just over US$ 2.50) to release the girl “because they spent their airtime on the announcement”. And the radio station is government owned!! I just couldn’t believe it. I mean the government is already taking money off the people from tax and what not and this station wanted to charge this poor family to take their girl back just because they had to use half a minute of their “airtime” announcing about the girl!?!
Continue reading ‘news from home…news to home…’
copylefT 2008
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