11th January 2009

This week has been really, really hard. In fact the last two weeks have been difficult – frequent power cuts, no running water, no internet, and no phone network. Argh! It's strange, but I can deal with no running water (washing out of a bucket? No problem!). However, give me a week with power cuts lasting more than 24 hours, and no internet connection, and I go completely crazy … not to mention I start to drive my poor project manager insane with my constant moaning.

When I have no internet connection, it's very hard to run Hanna's Orphanage, and instead the bulk of the work is dumped on the people back in England (who have jobs and lives and everything!). It gets even worse when there is no phone connection either, and I can't even call the orphanage in Addis! Of course, there's also the fact that I miss being able to talk to my friends or catch up with news at home – I love getting letters, and it's all very well to write to people, but I miss the immediacy of email.

But the thing that really makes me mad? There's no schedule! Nobody knows when the power is going to go off or when it's going to come back on again, so it's impossible to plan your day. Last Monday I planned to go to the school and spend the day there, so I didn't need power … which meant of course the electricity was on! On Tuesday I needed to do admin stuff in the office – so was there any power? Of course not. If someone had told me 'there will be no power all day Tuesday' I would have organised to go to the school then. For a control freak like me, the constant uncertainty is painful.

I'm the only one who thinks the lack of schedule is a problem, though. Nobody thinks it's bad to have no power for days at a time with no reason, and nobody would even think of complaining about it. Partly that's because there's nobody to complain to; if this was happening in the UK, you could write to the company, you could complain to the government, you could send 'Mrs Angry from Tumbridge Wells' letters to the newspapers. Here, there is nobody. We tried to complain to the telecommunications people and tried to find out any information about why the internet was off, and whether it was ever going to come back on again, and they just looked at us as if we'd asked them to make cheese. Often, the only answer you'll get is 'this is common in Ethiopia' (keep a lookout for that phrase in future blogs …).



But even if there was someone to complain to, people just don't. I'm not sure if it's because they simply don't feel electricity is their main priority (let's be honest, there are few people in rural Ethiopia who worry about watching CSI on a Monday night – having enough to eat, yes, watching TV, no.) or because they feel they have no right to expect anything. There's no a sense of 'you are a public service, I am your client, there is a level of service and/or information I am entitled to'. And from the other side, there is no sense of 'we are a public body, serving the public'.

I have never really been a fan of privatising various state-run services (railways, for instance) but here I can see benefits. For instance, when football is on, people charge 2 birr for you to go and watch the big screen. Of course, they need people to know about it – so they put a sign on an old disused bus outside the post office, telling people what games are being shown that day.

Why can't the electricity people put a sign up saying 'this week there will be no power on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday'? Because there is no money in it, nobody will complain if they don't and so there is no motivation to do it.

Which is why I am going slowly insane living here …