The Lord provides

Looking at my last post, I realize we've made some progress in terms of the basics that I've largely taken for granted before coming to Haiti. So I'll give some updates there.

Internet: our provider sent a technician to the house, who fixed the wireless router, so that's been good. The range is not quite as far as I'd like, but I'm definitely thankful for web access for more than one person, and in rooms other than the office, which during the day is one of the hottest rooms in the house. Sometimes at night, too.

Electricity: city power is still sporadic, but we bought some more batteries (they're basically the size and shape of car batteries, though they're 6 volts, rather than 12). Also, our big generator was fixed and returned to us, which is good, though it burns gasoline at a much faster rate than the small generator. The advantage of the big generator is that it provides more power--we can run the fridge and lights and fans and the modem and router, and recharge the batteries all at the same time. The same guy who brought it back also changed some of the settings on the inverter, which has helped, too. The next paragraph involves some electrical stuff, which if you're not into, you needn't worry about, though it's been a bit of an education for me.

So an inverter typically changes direct current (DC, typically from batteries) to alternating current (AC, which is what wall outlets provide). The big fancy ones that you mount on a wall (or at least the one we have) can convert a lot of electricity (measured in watts, or kilowatts), but there's a limit. Also, ours is also supposed to do the reverse of what inverters normally do: it can change AC into DC so that the batteries can get recharged. This is supposed to happen when we're getting city power, or when the generator is running. Our 6 old batteries were getting depleted rather quickly, so we bought 12 new ones, and a friend helped set them up (in a pattern of both series and parallel connections so that they supply 12 volt power to the inverter). We thought our problem was solved. But no. Our house was still running out of electricity rather quickly. So we were always very happy (and still are) when a certain light bulb on the bottom floor of the house turns out, indicating that the city is providing electricity. This meant that we could plug in the fridge, appliances, run the water pump (which meant we wouldn't have to take bucket showers or brush our teeth with bucket water), and recharge the batteries. But in any case, we were still puzzled, and thought there must be something wrong with the inverter--it wasn't charging the batteries, or wasn't doing it fast enough. During the day, we were running out of electricity rather quickly. Compounding our confusion was the fact that we had a voltmeter--an instrument to measure how charged a battery is--but it wasn't until recently that we figured out that it was completely inaccurate. But now that we figured that out, and now that the generator guy has changed some of the settings on the inverter, we think things are running fairly well. Whenever we're running on batteries, though, we're still a little uncertain as to how long they'll go before giving out. The other information that we fortuitously discovered was that if both the big generator and the small generator are plugged into the house, and if we're running the small generator and the big one is not running, the small one will not provide steady reliable power to the house. Once we unplug the big generator (which isn't even running), though, the small one will power the house. Good stuff to know.

R, who will be going to some fairly remote areas of China soon, has been saying that it's been good to learn about these kinds of things now, so that she can hopefully apply it in Asia. And I think it's generally a good thing to be familiar with this kind of stuff if you're either going to a less developed country or going somewhere in the US (maybe a cabin or something) that's not connected to an electrical grid. And if you're going to really need electricity. Which as lawyers working for a foundation that's headquartered in the US has been a real need for us.

Gasoline: So the Port Au Prince area still seems to have a rather severe gas shortage. I just did some googling and found some news articles from 4/21 to 4/23 saying that 2 oil tankers have arrived, but that apparently the Haitian government has not allowed the oil to be released yet (also saying this may be an example of some government corruption in allowing the oil distributors here to continue to profit from the continuation of greatly inflated gas prices). As an aside, wikipedia states:

In 2006, Haiti was ranked as the most corrupt nation out of the 163 that were surveyed for the Index.[4] The International Red Cross reported that Haiti was 155th out of 159 countries in a similar survey of corrupt countries[5]

And there's citations for each sentence.

One of our translators said that if you know someone at a gas station, you might be able to get them to sell you a barrel of gas. Then you take it to the side of the street (which might be your home on the side of the street), and set out a 1 gallon cooking oil container filled with gas on a table or an overturned stool or such. Desperate drivers will then stop at your "shop" and buy gasoline from you at the going rate for street gas. Which lately apparently is a bit more than $8/gallon. Which means you can make some pretty good money. We've bought some gasoline a number of times in the past 2 weeks at this rate. It's all pretty makeshift/inventive. The cooking oil containers are like the ones you see at the supermarket for corn oil or such, 1 gallon containers. The woman we've usually bought from is selling from her house by the side of the road. She's got a big metal funnel, with various joints and pieces welded together, which her customers can borrow to pour the oil from these cooking oil containers into their cars. She's got a bunch of these cooking oil containers filled with either gasoline or diesel (she's expanded her product offering). And a big barrel, with a length of rubber tubing, so she can transfer the gas into a bucket. From the bucket, she pours gas into each 1 gallon cooking oil container. And when I helped buy some and refueled our car, and returned the containers to her, she also had a basin with some water and soap, so that her customers could wash their hands.

Last week, we were fortunate enough while driving around to find a gas station that was selling gas. It's a good feeling when you find one, since we'll drive by a gas station that has vehicles fueling from the pumps, and we'll hope, but often find that they're only selling diesel. Still, somehow our translators are often able to tell just by looking at the gas station whether they're also selling gas or not. Anyway, we found one, and Sd, our translator who was with us, walked up and confirmed that they were selling gas. However, maneuvering our vehicle in would be hard. We did have a gas container, but no funnel. So Sd asked for a water bottle, and someone had a pocket knife, and we cut around the bottom of the water bottle to create a makeshift funnel. We bought the gas, pumping it into the container, walked the 20 yards to where the car was parked, and used the funnel to refuel the car.

Another little anecdote relating to gas stations was on one of the last days that B was with us. (He flew back to the US last week.) We were at a gas station (I think we were refueling our diesel vehicle, so no hassles there). A guy walked up to us carrying a plastic storage container, a bit bigger than a shoebox. It had a bunch of pieces of fried squid inside. He also had a gallon jug of some red sauce. B, deciding he wanted the experience, decided to buy. The guy had a bunch of styrofoam cups, and took one out, filled it with fried squid, and produced a toothpick, which he put into the cup, and sold it to B. (Don't remember whether B decided to get some of that red sauce, too).

B's comment: "I'm eating squid from a box".
My reply: "You're eating squid from a box from a guy at a gas station"

And my other gas station incident was less funny (in case you didn't pick up on it, we laughed a bit after the exchange above). I was in a car with Bl, another translator, trying to get some errands done. We thought a gas station might have been selling gas, but found out it was only selling diesel. But it was around lunchtime, so we decided to eat lunch there. Now I've been to plenty of combination gas station/fast food places in the U.S., but usually they were in sort of less populated places. This was on a pretty major road, and the clientele involved a good number of folks wearing pretty nice clothes. So it just felt a little odd, ordering sandwiches, and eating at a gas station, with a fair number of people around in dress shirts and slacks, along with others not as nicely dressed.