Totally Powerless

I am sitting in the funder’s office – I came here today to print off a whole heap of documents to give out to people at the government body (since they don’t have working printers or photocopies that work there). There is no Nepa. The generator has been broken for two days now. So I can’t print anything. With no power, there is also no wireless internet here. I have my dongle with me, but that hasn’t worked all day for no apparent reason. When the electricity does come back on for a few minutes at a time, for some reason it only powers half of the building; of course, the wireless router and the printers are in the half that isn’t powered. There is lukewarm water in the water cooler, but I can’t make myself a cup of tea until we have power. Since there is no power, the boss has gone back to his home to work. Since there is no power and the boss is not around, all of my Nigerian colleagues seem to have disappeared. The way to get lunch around here – in an area where there aren’t really any shops – is to ask one of the admin staff to go and get it for you (from the magical places only she seems to be able to access) or to ask her to cook something for you; but she’s not around and I doubt she’d be able to prepare anything without electricity anyway.

It’s raining, and since my mode of transport is okada, I can’t go anywhere until it has finished and the bikes all come out to play again. So I can’t go home, and I can’t go and get myself some food.

I’m onto my second laptop battery, having already exhausted the first one. I have under 2 hours left until this one dies, in which time I need to finish off the documents that I will then not be able to email or print anyway. We have had almost no NEPA at home for the past week, so it’s unlikely I will be able to charge them up overnight. There is rarely NEPA at the government building, and when the generator’s on we get power for the lights and the fan but the sockets don’t work. So, even if I go to the other office tomorrow, I won’t be able to charge anything up.

This is all most frustrating. I am powerless – in more than one sense – to do anything at all*, other than sit in a dark office and drink lukewarm water, waiting. Waiting for either power to return or the rain to stop.

*Including publishing this post - this actually happened several days ago.