The Joys of Living with Unpredictability!

The theme of service delivery over the last few weeks (and months) can be summed up in a word: unpredictable. For some reason, the local infrastructure has been particularly challenged in recent days.

An example: on Friday afternoon, at the end of a long week of teaching, a colleague and I sat down at the two office computers to wrap up some work before enjoying an evening out. Just as the computers were booting up… ZAP! The power went out. It came on 90 minutes later, but that’s how it’s been going here; we never know what will work and what won’t, nor how long something will keep working. It makes cooking an adventure (the pasta water may or may not get to a boil, and that egg just might get fully fried, or it might not…), and the daily suspense involved with taking a shower is exciting (will there be hot water or water pressure this morning?). Besides being unpredictable, there never seems to be an explanation for any particular service outage - except for the routine blaming of any such problem on inferior components from China (see next post for more on this phenomenon).

It’s been a good exercise in taking nothing for granted, in being flexible, and in appreciating the simple luxuries and conveniences when they are available. The power goes out 2 or 3 times most days, which mean no hot water, no internet, and low to no water pressure. Sometimes the power stays off for a short time (45 minutes or so), and other times it’s gone for half a day or more. This makes prepping for class hard, since no power means no printing or photocopying teaching materials and no getting the students into the Computer Lab (which we try to do for a period each day – and we’ve had good luck in that goal). At worst, it has also meant not being able to flush toilets or wash hands before lunch – which is a challenge since we eat with our daily lunch our hands!

Independent of the power, the campus internet service also disappears a few times each week (at its worst, we were more than 10 days without service). In addition, the ethio tel cellular network (nicknamed the “not-work”) is very spotty in our area. We often can’t make or receive calls, and text messages can arrive anywhere between 20 minutes and 6 hours after they were sent. Again, unpredictability! 

What’s been inspiring in the face of all this inconvenience is how many people manage to stay laid-back and not get worked up by the service interruptions.Our students are especially resilient and perpetually cheerful. For myself, I feel like I’m doing well at appreciating the days and times that the services all work – and not worrying too much when they don’t. It helps, of course, to know that just outside the college gates people are living in much more challenging conditions, for example with no plumbing and no appliances to use even if the power is on.

Monday morning update:

power? YES

Internet? NO

hot water? YES

water pressure? NO

Monday evening update: all systems off (am posting this, more than 36 hours after writing it, from an Internet cafe with a generator)