Power, of the electrical sort

The big storm yesterday afternoon knocked down branches and even some small trees. Willem was in Port au Prince picking up the 13 person construction team when it came through. He said there weren't many branches on the roads up here, but in the city it was worse. It took them almost 2 hours to get back from the airport because of the combination of rush hour and the downed branches.

Anyway, one of the branches took out our electricity. Johane says it could be days before we have public power again. We do have two inverters here--one for the upstairs and one for me. Basically an inverter is a pack of batteries (they look like car batteries) that charge when the public electric is on. Then when the public electric is turned off, the inverter automatically kicks in and the house is run off the inverter. Since I've been here the public electricity has come on between 6 and 7 each night and it shuts off about 12 hours later. Now that I know the public electricity is not going to be charging my inverter I will be very stingy with my inverter's power. When my laptop runs out of juice, I won't be charging it for a while!

Oh, a third way of getting electricity here is to run a generator. I can hear at least one generator this morning. They will run it for a little while this morning, probably shut it off for most of the day, and then run it again tonight when they need power again. They just put fuel in it when they need more power.

I'll let you know when I have electricity again!