Living without electricity for an hour's blackout can be fun, especially if you are a child. You get to use candles and flashlights, and it is almost like a camping trip. But when it is every day, for hours and hours, it isn't so fun.
Today the electricity went off around 7AM. It came on again almost 8 hours later, stayed a couple of hours, and went off again. And so it goes.
How do we function? Well, years ago, it was just candles and hurricane lamps. The church would sometimes use a small propane tank attached to a long pole that had a lantern like thingie on the end. Those gave more light. I remember for our Wednesday night prayer meetings, that the deaf group would buy a candle, and when the candle burned down, the meeting ended. Deaf people cannot communicate so well in the dark.
You can still buy treadle sewing machines here, although these days you can run them by electricity OR treadle. Most people that have a home phone, have the wired kind, since those don't go off with the electricity.
These days more and more people have inverters. This is a little box that you hook up to batteries (car batteries or similar). The batteries charge when there is electricity, and when the lights go off, your lights stay on, and draw power from the batteries. The box is wired up through your breaker box, to where you want the electricity.
In my case, as with many middle and lower class homes, everything except the kitchen is hooked up. I have a kitchen light, but the refrigerator and microwave don't work on batteries. I have four batteries. A friend of mine who has twelve, and two inverters, runs even her refrigerator, which is large, and never runs out of electricity.
Yesterday and today, my batteries ran out before the electricity came back on. Maybe this was because they really didn't have much time to recharge between blackouts, and maybe because the blackouts were just so long that even fully charged batteries wouldn't last long enough.
But when I do have battery power, I can do most anything. I cannot blow dry my hair or use the toaster, but I can run my tiny washing machine and of course my computer. I cannot use the school's laser printer, but I could run the tv, if I ever took it out of the closet.
Electricity is not distributed on an equal basis all over the city. Certain areas have no blackouts. Like say, where the president lives. I used to live a block from a hospital, and blackouts were extremely rare. Then there are the areas where neighborhood associations have made a deal with the electric company that they would all pay their electric bills. And of course the rich tend to have more than the poor, but then, they do usually pay for it.
One interesting thing is that lately more and more people are buying AC. This is really new. And I'm not sure that it is good. Because we don't have enough electricity to run lights, and now we will have to run AC? A friend of mine lives above a river community. Now the river communities don't usually pay electricity. Most all of theirs is stolen. And he says he is hearing the hum of AC coming from those houses! Those are usually the poorest people in the land, yet some of them have AC that I, living on a middle class level cannot afford!
About fifty percent of the electricity in the country is stolen. It is stolen by rich, by poor, by large companies and by small, by nonchristians, and sadly, by Christians.
I still remember the day, many years ago, when I lived in an apt. building and they turned our electricity off. When we complained that we had paid our bill, they told us, "but your neighbors haven't." And they weren't going to turn it on again until the rest of our building paid up. Our building had six apts. and only two of us paid regularly. If they only turned off the non-payers, they would have just tapped into the line again; they needed to turn it off at the pole to make it a bit harder. Not that that would stop them: people are always climbing the poles and tapping in, but usually you have to hire someone to do that, whereas on the ground work most people can do themselves.
Anyway, the story continues. They went all through our area shutting off all the electricity of overdue billpayers. The people in the area who stole their electricity didn't have theirs shut off, however, because they weren't overdue! The electric company is fully aware of entire sectors where no one pays. So there we were, sitting in darkness, while the electricity thieves had lights.
As for stealing, I've seen guys climb a pole with no ladder or equipment in less than three seconds! And it is common to see people hooking up electricity. In fact, the electric company doesn't actually hook up my electricity totally. They bring it to the meter on or near my house. It is my responsibility to pay someone to hook it up from the meter to the house.
What you really have to watch out for is people who tap into your electricity, so that you don't end up paying for their use.
By the way, it became illegal to steal electricity this year. I have to wonder what was it before? But now they can actually put you in jail for it. Still I haven't heard of anyone actually getting jailed so far.
One friend told me this story. She had no money to pay her bill, so they shut her electricity off. She decided to leave it off till she could afford to pay it. A month later, she went in to pay the bill and have it turned back on. There she found a double bill. One for the overdue month, and one for the month she had been using candles. The electric company assumed that she had simply tapped into someone else's electricity. They said no one would live a month without it. So she was unable to get hers back until she paid both months, despite the fact that a simple check of her meter would have verified she hadn't used the electricity.
I often joke that we in the DR get a lot more joy out of our electricity than people in the developed world do. Two or three times a day, a shout of joy is heard all through the neighborhood, as the lights come on!
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
Flies, rats, mosquitos, oh my!
Well, I have a blog for the school, but sometimes I want to talk about other things, so this will be more of that. I want to talk about what life--and specifically my life--is like, here in the Dominican Republic. You should know that I'm an American ("norteamericana"), a Christian missionary to the deaf, and I live at about a middle-class level. Make that lower middle-class. So that is the viewpoint I'm coming from. I don't have a car; I use public transportation. I eat like an American at home, and like a Dominican when I go out or visit friends.
[Note: here I had to stop and put on mosquito repellent. My new house is in an area that is just swarming with mosquitoes. Before the move, I hadn't had a mosquito bite in four months. After...well, bunches of them.]
I want to talk about things that are on my mind. Like moving. I don't want to whine, just inform. This is a tell it as I see it blog, and is not written with the intention of offending anyone. I don't claim that what happens to me happens to everyone. It is just what happens to me, OK? It is my experience here. Disclaimer done.
Having said that, I'll tell you about my recent move. First of all, I had only been in my other place for about six months, when I was informed I'd have to either sign a contract or move. I chose to move. That apt. was rented from a friend, whose father-in-law decided that the house belonged to him. She and her husband had built on top of the mother-in-law's house with the parents' permission. Unfortunately they had no legal rights when the father-in-law decided he would require a contract which included a raise in rent. Doubtless the extra money was for his pocket not theirs. And they had no say in anything.
Nevertheless, I began to see this as from the hand of God. For one thing, my old apt. was missing a sliding glass door, the front door, and two windows. It had bars, so no one would break in, but I covered the openings with canvas to keep out the rain. With another hurricane season upon us, I wasn't looking forward to what I went through last year.
A friend helped me find this place, just three doors down from her own apt. It's just a two minute walk to the church I attend, as well as to get to public transportation routes. It's on a paved road that turns to dirt, just a couple of houses before mine. So it is muddy when it rains, and dusty when it doesn't. I'm in walking distance of a deaf couple who are friends of mine, although the neighborhood takes a turn for the worse over there; it's a drug infested area and robbers on motorcycles are known to sometimes cruise around mugging people. Usually if you give them what they want (your money, cell phone, camera etc.) they will leave without harming you.
Big cities are often like that. But I digress.
Suffice it to say, that I'm mostly pleased with the location.
The house itself, has lots of problems. When I first agreed to rent, the landlord--well, he really is the guy who works for the landlord, but he does the work, so I'll just call him that--agreed to repaint, which was badly needed, and to put all the plumbing and electrical stuff in good working shape.
Here, you maintain your own place, at least the inside. So if you have a plumbing problem, it is your problem not your landlord's. For this reason, it is important to get the apt./house in good shape.
I had to buy a $100US pump to pump the water up to the water tank, so as to have running water all the time. Nevertheless, for the first two weeks I had serious plumbing problems. It seems that the house had previously had a serious leaky pipe, and instead of tearing up the whole second floor to find the problem, they had diverted the water through a system of other pipes outside. So the bathrooms had pvc pipes coming in from outside, as did the kitchen. The landlord evidently didn't realize the extent of the previous problem and reconnected the built in pipes. This caused a major water leak that filtered down every cement wall in the house for the first week I was there. The new paint job was ruined in every room; it is now peeling off all over the place. Mold started to grow on the doors, but thankfully not on the walls. (Could be that bleach spray helped.) The landlord finally heard me when I showed him that it was raining in my bathroom, and that a bucket had caught about an inch and a half of water from the roof overnight. I reminded him that our agreement was that he hand it over in good condition.
He called in a handyman who is not a plumber, because he was much cheaper than a plumber. This guy could only work after his regular job and on weekends, so for the first two weeks, I was using buckets for my water supply. Every time he fixed something, it would need refixing, because, nice as he is, he isn't a plumber.
In another two weeks, the walls had pretty much dried out. I put out damp rid to try to save all my paper and cloth supplies from mold, and that worked pretty well.
So for now, there is only one leak. Daily a puddle appears, seemingly out of nowhere, in the bathroom.
After the water, came the rats. I had done major sorting of everything into its room, and now was settling down to the more detailed unpacking. The closet close to the kitchen I was using for sort of a pantry/garage, to hold some foodstuffs and tools. As I took everything out to resettle it more nicely, I noticed that there was linguini all over the place, and that a package of crackers and another of pretzels had been opened.
The neighbors recommended "Tres pasos"--literally "three steps." Supposedly when the rat eats the poison, it takes no more than three steps before falling over dead. There is rat poison outside and inside (no pets around) and one rat outside took the bait. The "plumber" told me there is a rat's nest on the roof.
Mosquitos don't usually like me. But here there are so many starving mosquitos, they'll take anyone. Usually after a small taste of my blood, they go elsewhere. So I found myself with literally hundreds of tiny mosquito bites on my feet the first week. Since then, I wear repellent as if it were the finest lotion. They still manage to get me from time to time, but not like before. Now mosquitos here are dangerous. They carry dengue, and dengue can be deadly. Usually the first time you get it, it's like the flu. The second time it is more dangerous. Maleria is a lesser concern here in the capital, but out near the border that is an additional danger.
I sprayed for roaches when I moved in, and have been finding dead roaches almost daily. Most homes here, including mine, don't have screens, and roaches like to fly in the windows when the humidity is up. [I remember a missionary was asked why don't we have screens here, and he replied, "How would the flies get out?]
Oh yes, flies. The neighbor likes to put her garbage near my kitchen door, and anytime I put food out the flies come over for their share. In general, there is a lot of garbage thrown on the streets, so flies are a perpetual problem.
Noise. I visited this place at least three times before moving in, and ask two of the neighbors about noise. Both assured me it was very calm around here, just as it was when I visited. They lied. No, I shouldn't say that. They told the truth from a Dominican viewpoint. They are so used to the noise that they no longer consider it noisy here.
This house has three floors. The first floor is mine and I share it with a hair salon. The hair salon is normally pretty peaceful. We have daily blackouts. When the lights are out and someone wants their hair dried, it means turning on the gasoline run generator, which is very noisy. That will be on for at least a half an hour.
The gay couple upstairs likes to play music very loud. One of them is a cop, so I guess I can't call the cops on them, LOL. Fortunately, they only do this ten or fifteen hours a week, and not usually after midnight.
The small corner store on a street behind me also likes loud music, mostly on the weekends.
The people to the right and in front also like loud music.
Sometimes, generally on the weekend, I can hear three or four different clashing styles of music all at once. There is a conglomeration of popular merengue, american music, rap rock in Spanish and English, sometimes with very vulgar words, and yeah, it gets annoying. So I put on my earmuffs, the noise-reducing kind, and seek refuge in whatever room seems to be the quietest for the moment. I've lived in both less noisy and more noisy environments. A lot of the music goes off when there is a blackout; it's pretty bad when you are praying for the electricity to go off!
Internet and phone. Here, you usually have to have a contract with your internet company. In my case, I had an 18 month contract with Codetel. The deal is, that if you move out of their service area, there is no penalty; otherwise you have to finish up the contract. In my case, when I moved, I called them up and ordered my service moved. After three or four calls, and eight visits with corresponding waits in line, just a month later, I was informed that there was no service in my area and that I would be released from the contract. Before that, I was told at each visit, that they would be out to install my internet in 3-5 days.
Now I have another internet service, tricom. Well, sort of. It works at a snail's pace and cuts off and on at any time, necesitating a reset of the equipment. Speed tests show it to be faster than 25% of the country--translation: slower than 75%. After a single day of this, I called to ask them to up the speed. They said I couldn't do that for three months! It turns out it was a special price. Well the guy had told me a month. But I told them I don't care about the sale price, charge me the regular price now. They said they would do that. That was last week, and it was supposed to happen very quickly. They still haven't done it. I called again. "It will be done within 24 hours." I'm not holding my breath.
When the phone service was turned on, I was supposed to get a phone. I've been calling the man each day, asking for my phone. He's always going to bring it today. But somehow, today never comes. I have an older phone that I can use, as long as I hold the wire in while I'm talking. :P
There is nothing particularly unusual in any of this. This is just my normal Dominican Life.
[Note: here I had to stop and put on mosquito repellent. My new house is in an area that is just swarming with mosquitoes. Before the move, I hadn't had a mosquito bite in four months. After...well, bunches of them.]
I want to talk about things that are on my mind. Like moving. I don't want to whine, just inform. This is a tell it as I see it blog, and is not written with the intention of offending anyone. I don't claim that what happens to me happens to everyone. It is just what happens to me, OK? It is my experience here. Disclaimer done.
Having said that, I'll tell you about my recent move. First of all, I had only been in my other place for about six months, when I was informed I'd have to either sign a contract or move. I chose to move. That apt. was rented from a friend, whose father-in-law decided that the house belonged to him. She and her husband had built on top of the mother-in-law's house with the parents' permission. Unfortunately they had no legal rights when the father-in-law decided he would require a contract which included a raise in rent. Doubtless the extra money was for his pocket not theirs. And they had no say in anything.
Nevertheless, I began to see this as from the hand of God. For one thing, my old apt. was missing a sliding glass door, the front door, and two windows. It had bars, so no one would break in, but I covered the openings with canvas to keep out the rain. With another hurricane season upon us, I wasn't looking forward to what I went through last year.
A friend helped me find this place, just three doors down from her own apt. It's just a two minute walk to the church I attend, as well as to get to public transportation routes. It's on a paved road that turns to dirt, just a couple of houses before mine. So it is muddy when it rains, and dusty when it doesn't. I'm in walking distance of a deaf couple who are friends of mine, although the neighborhood takes a turn for the worse over there; it's a drug infested area and robbers on motorcycles are known to sometimes cruise around mugging people. Usually if you give them what they want (your money, cell phone, camera etc.) they will leave without harming you.
Big cities are often like that. But I digress.
Suffice it to say, that I'm mostly pleased with the location.
The house itself, has lots of problems. When I first agreed to rent, the landlord--well, he really is the guy who works for the landlord, but he does the work, so I'll just call him that--agreed to repaint, which was badly needed, and to put all the plumbing and electrical stuff in good working shape.
Here, you maintain your own place, at least the inside. So if you have a plumbing problem, it is your problem not your landlord's. For this reason, it is important to get the apt./house in good shape.
I had to buy a $100US pump to pump the water up to the water tank, so as to have running water all the time. Nevertheless, for the first two weeks I had serious plumbing problems. It seems that the house had previously had a serious leaky pipe, and instead of tearing up the whole second floor to find the problem, they had diverted the water through a system of other pipes outside. So the bathrooms had pvc pipes coming in from outside, as did the kitchen. The landlord evidently didn't realize the extent of the previous problem and reconnected the built in pipes. This caused a major water leak that filtered down every cement wall in the house for the first week I was there. The new paint job was ruined in every room; it is now peeling off all over the place. Mold started to grow on the doors, but thankfully not on the walls. (Could be that bleach spray helped.) The landlord finally heard me when I showed him that it was raining in my bathroom, and that a bucket had caught about an inch and a half of water from the roof overnight. I reminded him that our agreement was that he hand it over in good condition.
He called in a handyman who is not a plumber, because he was much cheaper than a plumber. This guy could only work after his regular job and on weekends, so for the first two weeks, I was using buckets for my water supply. Every time he fixed something, it would need refixing, because, nice as he is, he isn't a plumber.
In another two weeks, the walls had pretty much dried out. I put out damp rid to try to save all my paper and cloth supplies from mold, and that worked pretty well.
So for now, there is only one leak. Daily a puddle appears, seemingly out of nowhere, in the bathroom.
After the water, came the rats. I had done major sorting of everything into its room, and now was settling down to the more detailed unpacking. The closet close to the kitchen I was using for sort of a pantry/garage, to hold some foodstuffs and tools. As I took everything out to resettle it more nicely, I noticed that there was linguini all over the place, and that a package of crackers and another of pretzels had been opened.
The neighbors recommended "Tres pasos"--literally "three steps." Supposedly when the rat eats the poison, it takes no more than three steps before falling over dead. There is rat poison outside and inside (no pets around) and one rat outside took the bait. The "plumber" told me there is a rat's nest on the roof.
Mosquitos don't usually like me. But here there are so many starving mosquitos, they'll take anyone. Usually after a small taste of my blood, they go elsewhere. So I found myself with literally hundreds of tiny mosquito bites on my feet the first week. Since then, I wear repellent as if it were the finest lotion. They still manage to get me from time to time, but not like before. Now mosquitos here are dangerous. They carry dengue, and dengue can be deadly. Usually the first time you get it, it's like the flu. The second time it is more dangerous. Maleria is a lesser concern here in the capital, but out near the border that is an additional danger.
I sprayed for roaches when I moved in, and have been finding dead roaches almost daily. Most homes here, including mine, don't have screens, and roaches like to fly in the windows when the humidity is up. [I remember a missionary was asked why don't we have screens here, and he replied, "How would the flies get out?]
Oh yes, flies. The neighbor likes to put her garbage near my kitchen door, and anytime I put food out the flies come over for their share. In general, there is a lot of garbage thrown on the streets, so flies are a perpetual problem.
Noise. I visited this place at least three times before moving in, and ask two of the neighbors about noise. Both assured me it was very calm around here, just as it was when I visited. They lied. No, I shouldn't say that. They told the truth from a Dominican viewpoint. They are so used to the noise that they no longer consider it noisy here.
This house has three floors. The first floor is mine and I share it with a hair salon. The hair salon is normally pretty peaceful. We have daily blackouts. When the lights are out and someone wants their hair dried, it means turning on the gasoline run generator, which is very noisy. That will be on for at least a half an hour.
The gay couple upstairs likes to play music very loud. One of them is a cop, so I guess I can't call the cops on them, LOL. Fortunately, they only do this ten or fifteen hours a week, and not usually after midnight.
The small corner store on a street behind me also likes loud music, mostly on the weekends.
The people to the right and in front also like loud music.
Sometimes, generally on the weekend, I can hear three or four different clashing styles of music all at once. There is a conglomeration of popular merengue, american music, rap rock in Spanish and English, sometimes with very vulgar words, and yeah, it gets annoying. So I put on my earmuffs, the noise-reducing kind, and seek refuge in whatever room seems to be the quietest for the moment. I've lived in both less noisy and more noisy environments. A lot of the music goes off when there is a blackout; it's pretty bad when you are praying for the electricity to go off!
Internet and phone. Here, you usually have to have a contract with your internet company. In my case, I had an 18 month contract with Codetel. The deal is, that if you move out of their service area, there is no penalty; otherwise you have to finish up the contract. In my case, when I moved, I called them up and ordered my service moved. After three or four calls, and eight visits with corresponding waits in line, just a month later, I was informed that there was no service in my area and that I would be released from the contract. Before that, I was told at each visit, that they would be out to install my internet in 3-5 days.
Now I have another internet service, tricom. Well, sort of. It works at a snail's pace and cuts off and on at any time, necesitating a reset of the equipment. Speed tests show it to be faster than 25% of the country--translation: slower than 75%. After a single day of this, I called to ask them to up the speed. They said I couldn't do that for three months! It turns out it was a special price. Well the guy had told me a month. But I told them I don't care about the sale price, charge me the regular price now. They said they would do that. That was last week, and it was supposed to happen very quickly. They still haven't done it. I called again. "It will be done within 24 hours." I'm not holding my breath.
When the phone service was turned on, I was supposed to get a phone. I've been calling the man each day, asking for my phone. He's always going to bring it today. But somehow, today never comes. I have an older phone that I can use, as long as I hold the wire in while I'm talking. :P
There is nothing particularly unusual in any of this. This is just my normal Dominican Life.
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