Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Fun Times with EDH (Electricite d'Haiti)

  • We haven't had electricity at home for four days. This morning I finally got around to wiring a generator straight to our water pump so we could have running water again. An hour later there was a guy climbing the power pole in front of our house to hook up a line. I told him we didn't have any power so he used his pliers to shake our power line, and our lights came on immediately.
  • A week ago a woman was electrocuted a few houses down from ours in a yard where they do a lot of welding.
  • If you plug in any Mac Book Pro at our house and touch it while barefoot you get shocked. I have to put my feet on a wooden table or lie on the couch if I want to use my computer without shoes on.
  • Apparently only 200,000 people pay for electricity in Haiti. Meanwhile, power lines are a tangled mess of cut and spliced wires threading to people's homes.
  • We are not part of the 200,000. Though we are officially connected to EDH (and get regular visits from the meter men), we've lived in this house for two years without paying a power bill. There was an outstanding bill of three years when we moved in to this house that the landlord needs to pay before we can pay for the rest (which we do intend to do). EDH is not organized enough to know whether or not we are paying.

1 comment:

nerkert said...

We understand (although we have only had very brief power outages so far this time.) Please be careful.

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