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This has been one of those weeks where any plans you might have had at the outset are pretty much out of the window by Thursday. Why? Because it's raining and so the week went like this:
Monday - no power (electricity)
Tuesday - no internet (but power was back)
Wednesday - no power
Thursday - no power
Friday - power and internet - yay! Friday 13th is apparently lucky for some!
On Monday and even Tuesday I was okay with the situation. I made plans to shower elsewhere. Only cooked food that worked on the hob etc. Went out to buy diesel for our tiny generator that can't summon enough strength to run a fridge, but basic lights are okay. By Thursday the fridge was smelling pretty high. At our 6am breakfast, when I reached in for the milk I got pained exclamations from my husband and the kids so that the fridge door could only be opened a crack. Fortunately I found the green, moldy ham this morning so the stink has finally abated. I even got into the groove of phoning Kenya Power (KPLC) fairly often and having endless lists of account and report numbers scribbled in pencil on scraps of paper handy.
The laugh-out-loud, British 'Eliza Doolittle' voice of the automated answering service even got old - and normally it's hysterical. This extremely strange female British accent says "all of our customer service agents are busy (normal spiel), your call would be attended too shortly (very strange grammar and lots of emp-far-sis on the wrong syl-I-ble !?)' and it's on a loop - obviously - because the agents are always busy, especially when it's raining. The hold music went on for so long that there was ample time to start imagining the person behind the peculiar voice. A lady in India who had been trained by a voice coach who harked back to 1912? A British woman with delusions of grandeur, or a clever Kenyan who self taught by taking her cue from recordings of BBC World Service circa 1930.
If, after spending a minimum of 15 minutes on hold and by the grace of a small miracle, a person answers the phone, then you are in luck - but I can't help blustering at this point. "I have had no power for 3 days out of 4 this week and it really is unacceptable" I say. Invariably the customer service man or woman then hangs up. It's an abrupt ending to a frustrating wait.
To be honest, it's not as bad as it sounds as we did have some power on Monday and Wednesday night, through some notably biblical weather. I know that others around town have had much worse power cuts this week (no wonder our Mum's whatsapp group has been quiet, our iphones batteries are all dead). But why the power outage was a little frustrating for me was that I was trying to do something very important and that was move this blog and set up a social media empire!
Folks, the plunge has been taken. A new 'Africa Expat Wives Club' site is in the offing. I am really excited about it because it's a vanity project - no, not really, because it's been a creative process and a fun one and hopefully this will be the beginning of something new and fabulous. I hope you like the new logo above. It struck me today that the stiletto heel might be a bit 'stripper-y' - but hey ho.
Today, I tentatively opened a Facebook account - (yee gads - it has only taken me 10 years! - I fear that Big Brother truly knows where I am now). Instagram is next on the list and after that, (shudder), Twitter... I think that opening a YouTube account to upload my first vlog might have to be next week or the week after - electricity permitting and depending on how long it takes me to master 'i-movies' (thinking about it, that could be months!). On my first attempt at recording a vlog there was much eye-rolling from my teenage daughter who really could not believe that I was so inept at taking selfies, let alone speaking into the camera. It could be an epic fail - but at least I tried. Life is too short for standing still.
