As you may know, the Thanksgiving/Christmas season marks the end of long stretches of electricity, and no chances of 24 hours a day ever! Last year, a significant loss of a power station put the city at 16 hours of cuts daily shortly after our arrival. The cuts continued at least at 12 hours per day until May when ice melt began to provide some much needed power. The pre-season rains did not come as they should have so that compounded the problem.
This year we did not hit the 12 hour per day mark until March, which was a huge blessing! We lost power for 6 hours, followed by 3-5 on hours, 6 more off, and the remainder of 24 on. Thanks to generous supporters, we have not been without lights at all this year because of our solar-powered backup system. Yes, the fridge and TV stay off, but you might be surprised what you really don't need to be doing just fine. The real joy, however, has been the much needed rain fall we've been receiving 3-4 nights per week recently. Most of Nepal's hydro-power stations are small-scale hydro-electric plants which are not capable of storing large capacities of water. Since you can't really save hydropowered electricity, we've been given additional power every day. In fact, for the last two days, we've been without power for less than 2-3 hours each day. It has been wonderful, but we just don't know what to do with all this power!
Join us in being thankful for plentiful rains that might make a difference in the survival of this year's crops.
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