who needs power

Most of you who are somewhat familiar with the situation here know that electricity is not something to be counted on.  There is a government run electric company know here as EDH which is a french acronym for Electricity of Haiti.  It is the only company here and it does not have the capability of supplying electricity for everyone all the time, so we take turns.  Here in Port-au-Prince, the city is divided into zones and certain zones get electricity at certain times during the day.  Now, this wouldn't be too bad if there was a schedule that we could count on, then we could plan our chores that involve electricity around the EDH schedule.  Instead the power comes when it wants and goes when it wants.  Since we've been here, we've been getting it at our house beginning roughly at 8:30pm and ending sometime between 3am-6am.

There are ways of getting electricity when EDH is not on.  Some people have generators which are extremely expensive to buy and expensive to run as regular gas is somewhere between 5 and 6 dollars a gallon here.  Some people have a bank of batteries that are connected to an inverter system.  This is nice because the batteries automatically charge when EDH is on and then when it is gone, they are able to run the lights, fans, fridge and power outlets throughout the house for a day or so.  Others have solar panels, some have windmills, and many simply do without power.

We're lucky in the house we're staying in to have a good inverter system that is able to carry the house along with a backup generator.

Here at the Chapel, we have two large generators that can run the whole compound and an inverter system for the office.

We require a little more power at the Chapel on Sunday mornings as there are about 20 ceiling fans to run, along with a sound system and lights.  So, we run the big generator.

Yesterday morning all was going as usual, the generator was humming away and everything was working.  Then, about 15 minutes into the service, in the middle of a song, our power was gone. 

In a normal Haitian church, this would be no big deal and the service would go on.  In fact, I can remember one time I was sitting in an evening service at a Haitian church while a choir was presenting a special song and suddenly, mid song, the power went out.  The choir however did not miss a beat.  They just kept on singing away, and people took out their cell phones and opened them so we could have a little light.

Well, when you pack a few hundred people into the Chapel when it's 95 degrees out and then turn the fans off, it gets hot pretty quick.

So, the worship leader kept the congregation going, singing acapella, and since she had a few more songs to go before I needed to preach, I headed out to the generator house to see what was going on.

When I got there, Calixte, one of the chapel employee's, was pouring water into the radiator and there was a puddle of water underneath him that had spewed out of the generator.  He put the cap on and fired it up.  It ran, but there was water coming out and I realized as I got closer that it was spraying dirty, oily water on to my shirt.  Not the best thing to have happen when I was supposed to begin my sermon in about 10 minutes.  Luckily it didn't get me too bad.

So I went back to the Chapel and asked one of the elders if he could go check it out as I was about to preach.  He was able to fire up the older, smaller generator and it gave us enough power to run the fans and sound for the rest of the service.

It turned out that the water pump on the big generator was shot and is going to need to be replaced or rebuilt.  After the water pump quit, the generator began to overheat and shut itself off and that is when we lost our power.

So, hopefully we can get the pump fixed this week as we have a rental group using the facilities everyday next week, and they've paid for use of the generator.

So, just another Sunday morning here in Haiti.  Who needs power anyway?