the power of watt?

When we were back in Europe people asked us a lot of questions about our living conditions and about our electricity supply. If you're interested in our slightly complicated electricity supply, read on! If not, I won't be offended if you skip this post!

We have solar panels on our house. So far so good. Despite being ten years old they are functioning well. The batteries, however, which are now coming up for four years old, are as good as dead. This means, logically, that if the sun is up and shining, we have solar power. As soon as the sun sets, or on cloudy days, we don't. (Our reasons for not replacing the batteries will be explained below!)

A second source of electricity is our generator. Since it is noisy and guzzles diesel, we generally only use it for an hour or so in the evening to pump our well water, and to have an hour of electric light while we get the washing-up done and the kids washed. Bought when we moved to the village in February 2009 it very quickly developed a problem with one part which needed replacing. Unfortunately we still haven't been able to find this part in Benin (or through some research we've done in Europe) so our local electrician does a botch job from time to time to keep it going. Recently however the generator had been working less and less well so we had it serviced and the specialist discovered that the capacitor (?) had a fault. It turns out that this might be what wore out the other piece in the first place, so although things aren't perfect, we may have fewer problems in the future.

A future source of electricity will be mains electricity, but it is taking its time! The poles arrived in the village in April 2009. They were erected in October 2010. We got home from Europe in July this year to find cables, though we're not sure the work on the cables is quite finished yet:


The other question is where exactly this electricity will be generated. We've heard that it will probably come in from Togo (or even Ghana), which means it has to come a good distance before it reaches us. So although the poles and cables are in place near us, until they have also been installed between the border with Togo and our nearest town, there won't be much power coming through them. And we also need to find out just how much they will try to charge us to get hooked up (in neighbouring countries some organisations have been charged astronomical amounts and we may need to negotiate!).

So anyway, with the promise of mains electricity at some point in the future, we aren't sure it is worth investing £1000 or so in new batteries for our solar power system, and going through all the hassle of finding where we can order them from, getting them shipped/flown in, and trying to pay customs taxes (apparently we oughtn't to have to pay customs taxes because it's for our personal use, but we might have to spend a while arguing our case!).

We do have enough electricity to charge up our computers and phones, run the “knead-and-rise” cycle of our bread machine, keep our fridge going for 7 hours a day (so we don't bother trying to freeze anything), and to put the boys' fan on during their afternoon sleep. We don't have lights in the evening (except battery-powered ones or candles) or fans at night (hard during hot season!) and we do have to be thinking all the time about what to charge up when so that, for example, I have enough battery in my computer for the first couple of hours of work in the morning.

More electricity would make it easier to work in the evenings (your body and brain tend to think it's the middle of the night when you're in the dark, even if your computer's working), would keep us cooler and help us to sleep better at night, and would give us a properly working fridge and freezer. Obviously once mains electricity is here it won't be perfect, but we will always have solar and the generator, and be able to juggle between whatever works best/is cheaper!

This is absolutely not meant to be a post to make anyone sorry for us. You get used to functioning differently, and I am finding the lack of light in the evenings easier to deal with than I was at the beginning of the year. And the only thing we're asking for is prayer that the mains electricity will arrive soon, and that we won't have to pay too much to get connected! Maybe you could put a reminder to pray for us on the light switch you use the most often :o)

team news

The translation team has not been getting far with Exodus this month, mainly due to me being away for our annual conference, our trip to Cotonou and soon a few more days away to take our friend Judith back to Cotonou and get the car fixed in Parakou. The pastor and Philémon are carrying on with their individual translations, and when I have been here we've been plodding on through the description of the tabernacle.

Sometimes it really does feel hard, when you can't even be sure what the Hebrew means, but I am a stickler for consistency. So even if we aren't 100% sure what an object is, I like us to at least choose a word for it and stick with that. Sometimes it means pulling a sentence apart and then struggling to put it back together again, but it's a good brain-teasing exercise and there is some satisfaction in coming up with something we're all happy with.

Work is also disrupted by things you wouldn't have to contend with in Europe, like snake tracks being found in our compound and a search party being launched (no luck), or cows having got into Philémon's cotton fields (he has had to leave work today to go and sort that out). But of course we don't have other more “northern” problems, like snow making transport difficult!

conference and cotonou

We have had a busy last ten days. After the “Women's Day” service at church on the 6th we drove down to Parakou. This gave us all day Monday in Parakou before our conference meetings started in the evening, which meant we started the conference fresher than we might have. It had the added, and un-planned, benefit that Simon hung out with the kids' worker as she was setting up her stuff, and came round to the idea of going to the kids' activities!

Conference was good. The teaching on Romans 12 challenged me, in ways that confirmed things God has been teaching me lately about total trust in Him and acceptance of my limits and His infiniteness. Time spent with others was a blessing, and easier now that the boys are a bit older. Simon had a few wobbles but generally got on well at the kids' club, and on the last day of the conference even took his lunch off to eat with the other boys! Benjy decided to stick to me more than usual, but that may be a reaction to our new routine at home involving me leaving him for the mornings – he decided that even if being in our meetings meant being still and quiet, it was worth it to have some “Mummy Time”, and since he was so good I was still able to concentrate.

I do love our church here in the village, but it was a refreshing change to be able to worship in English and French! We were privileged to have a speaker and worship leaders come down from SIM Niger to serve us for the week, and our family also enjoyed getting to know them better over breakfasts in the Guesthouse (the other families were staying elsewhere).

One highlight of this conference for me was a Ladies Afternoon Tea I helped out with. A church in the States had very kindly sent over bookmarks and cards of encouragement, and also presents for us all! We played a game called Chinese Christmas which does involve some rather un-biblical behaviour (it can involve “stealing” someone else's presents – though our conference speaker had encouraged us to “appreciate” other people's gifts … probably not what he was thinking of!). It was fun though, as was the game which ended up with “stacks” of ladies sitting on each other's laps – very close fellowship at this Spiritual Life Conference!! And of course we enjoyed our tea and sweet treats too!

After Conference we didn't have much time to be sad that it was over, as we headed down to Cotonou to pick up a friend, Judith, who is staying for a couple of weeks. We also wanted to collect our residency cards. I managed to, but Marc's wasn't yet ready. At least this means the whole family won't have to travel down again for this reason, he'll go down on his own.

The dry harmattan wind is now blowing from the North here at home, and we haven't seen rain for weeks, so it was a surprise when we approached Cotonou to see this:


By the time we got into the city the rain was pouring down. It had taken people by surprise, and we saw lots of “abandoned” motorbikes by the side of the road, with their riders sheltering under buildings.


The roads are getting better in some places, where work is being done, and deteriorating in others. The long journey back from Cotonou to Parakou seemed endless … and then on our journey from Parakou to the village, the next day, our exhaust pipe dropped off! We were on a temporary road avoiding roadworks, ploughing through very fine sand. We heard a loud bang, the car shook, and Marc hurriedly stopped it. At first I thought maybe we'd lost our back wheels or something, the impact seemed so great … it was a relief when we realised that we could still drive the rest of the way home (albeit very noisily!!). The exhaust pipe was bent in two, so Marc shifted it to the edge of the road and left it there. A mechanic in Kandi is going to convert another exhaust pipe to fit our car, so we should soon be back on the roads a little more quietly!

wildlife of West Africa

Sorry, no elephants or camels, though elephants were seen just down the road from us last weekend, so maybe we'll get lucky one day! First of all, one of our huge rainy season snails. I was concerned its shell was about to fall off, but it seems this was normal:


Next two photos of frogs/toads (I'm no expert) which are lurking near our back door at the moment:



And finally, a baby bat we found which I assume had fallen from a nest (?) in our roof:


And yes, I am enjoying having a camera which can capture real close-ups!