Not Enough To Go Around or Too Much To Do?
I have been writing in my paper journal for the last few days because power has been a bit more iffy and I've been trying to get time away from the computer (but all that writing has been personal journal entries or project work so it won't end up on here). Today, the power has gone out at least 4 times since I've been at Ama's; I was up on the hill for about 4 hours around midday so there may have been more outages then that I didn't notice. These hot, dry days have seen a lot of load shedding - I was told it is relatively normal to have some periods of rolling outages but not usually this often.
Without any details about the damage to the country's electrical generation capabilities it is hard to speculate whether this has been due to a lack of power or whether there is just more demand. All major aid operations that I have heard about seem to bring their own generators to avoid being a burden on the already limited infrastructure; it's obviously a good idea, as well, to avoid relying on intermittent power when you have to run critical medical equipment. With the decrease in electrical overhead due to damaged businesses and houses, I'm at a loss to imagine what extra load could be present to overwhelm the normal power grid. Given that, I'd be inclined to guess there has been damage to the country's generation capabilities.
It's gotten a little cloudy in the last hour and that has helped cool things down a bit but it is stil blazing hot. Even growing up under the constant, baking desert sun wasn't enough to prepare me for this kind of weather. I was a bit surprised to see the regularity with which Nepali take breaks during the day but after trying to work nonstop in the heat, day after day, I now fully understand. Taking frequent breakswhen working outside is the only way to guarantee you have the strength to keep working every day in this sun.
Load Shedding By Another Name
We've been building a wall to help store all of the dirt and rubble from the house. It's going well but it is amazing how hard it has been to make progress. We lack enough of the basic tools to work quickly and there are so few people to help; everyone has their own problems to deal with and almost everyone still has their normal work to do as well. It feels a bit like the human equivalent of load shedding actually and I wouldn't be surprised if it is caused by equivalent issues: suddenly there is more work to do and there is less emotional energy to do it. In that kind of situation, everyone ends up having to pick their activities carefully because they don't know exactly how much energy they will have to spend nor what kind of new, higher priority activities will come up unexpectedly.
Despite all the difficulties, it is overwhelming how positive people are and how willing to tackle any problem put before them. The whole country has been asked to deal with a lot and given little in the way of help. Some people would let that kind of situation get them down but the Nepali aren't like that.