All Over the Map

I apologise for delay in posts. I hate to keep blaming everything on load shedding, but the fact of the matter is that it pretty much manages my life these days. It is so difficult to fit everything into a few precious hours of electricity each day, especially when those hours happen at inconvenient times. What is perhaps even more disconcerting is that I have become a slave to those hours. When the power comes on I feel obliged to be ultra-productive, regardless of the circumstances or time of day. There are times when the power is on from 8PM – midnight, and I’d rather just lay back and watch a movie, go out for dinner or call someone at home for a chat, but I have to heat water, iron clothes, do dishes, catch up on personal correspondence and finish up the day’s work. There are other times when it’s on from midnight – 4AM and I feel the need get up and do stuff. My sleep patterns are really not patterns at all, but random naps.

I moved into my new apartment over the weekend. It wasn’t a terribly difficult move apart from the fact that I had to do it by taxi. I had a couple of friends help me out which made it quite painless. We’d both take a load out to the cab, then my friend would stay and make sure that the taxi didn’t drive away with my stuff while I went back for another load. I don’t exactly live like royalty here, so it only took four trips. I sold my fridge to my new didi who bought it for her mother. She came to pick it up on Saturday morning and I was surprised that she arrived alone and without a vehicle. When I asked how she was planning to get the fridge home, she said she’d take a taxi. I thought she was out of her mind – taxis are tiny little hatchbacks that can hardly accommodate three Western passengers simultaneously. But sure enough, within in minutes she talked a cabbie into it. He came in with her, helped carry it out and load it in his car. He even got the hatch shut over it.

I was really excited to get to my new place. As I’ve mentioned, it has a beautiful sunny terrace that I’ve really been looking forward to. In addition, it offers quiet nights and a steady water supply. After I took the last load over yesterday morning, I had to go get my visa renewed across town. On the way back, I stopped at an internet cafe and started to blog about how happy I was to be in my new place. Alas, their generator had a hiccup of some kind, all the computers went dark and I lost my post.

When I got home my landlord came up to tell me about the new water situation. There is a huge water shortage in the Kathmandu valley (no news there) and the government is now only turning on the water supply to our neighbourhood between 3-4 AM. If we don’t have electricity during that time, we can’t pump water into the cistern, which means we go without water for the day. This means that I’m actually in a worse situation for water than I was before. If we do get water, it means running the pump in the middle of the night, which in turn means no sleep.

On top of this, the load shedding schedule changed again at some point over the weekend. Rumour has it that we are now up to 20 hours per day without electricity, but nobody knows for sure because they haven’t published a new schedule (likely because they’re afraid of the backlash). We just sit and wait for the power to come on and off and then scramble to get things done. It is impossible to plan anything and really, what is there to plan with only four hours of power a day?

The icing on the cake was a noisy night of dogs barking last night, something that apparently never happens in my new neighbourhood. So much for my quiet nights – let’s hope it was an anomaly and not the beginning of a trend. Today I woke up to cloudy skies; almost the first since I’ve been here and no doubt a precursor to monsoon season. No sitting on my sunny terrace today.

So after a great day yesterday, I’m having a seriously lousy one today. I really don’t know if I have it in me to live under these conditions. It’s one thing to go on a trek and live without your creature comforts, but to try to live a Western-style life without electricity and water is somewhat overwhelming. It’s not what I was expecting when I moved here. I was prepared for the pollution, dirt, crazy driving, hassles in the street, different culture, different work ethic, whole different way of doing things etc. All these are minor annoyances in the grand scheme of things. But now the annoyances seem to be outweighing any good I’m getting from this place. It’s very disheartening.

I’m not really sure what happens next. I could wake up tomorrow feeling great again, or things could continue to get worse. Maybe we’ll get our new load shedding schedule and it will actually be logical and make life easier. There are even rumours that there has been a deal struck with India to import some electricity. But if I continue to have to go days on end without being able to wash or flush my toilet and if I can’t call home or catch up on my work, I might feel the need to jump ship. God knows what I’d do...I’m sure that I wouldn’t be able to find work in Canada in this economy and there’s not exactly a mint-load of money in my bank account right now. Even if I could find a contract, I shudder to go back to the same work that made me so miserable before. I guess I’ll just have to spin some prayer wheels and see what the universe tells me.