I spoke too soon...

Yes, well, I guess I knew the boredom and "normality" would come to an end... just didn't know how soon that would be!

I woke up this morning to no internet. None at all. Problem was, I was the secretary for these meetings that I was in all week. So no time to put on my IT hat and go fix it until the tea break. At tea break, I mucked around with a few things that I know how to do, and then broke down and called some of the technicians from our internet provider. They've written emails to all their clients before to say that they don't deal with issues on the networks within their clients' systems - they only provide support for the actual VSAT modems. Which is fair enough. I also know that they're very short handed at the moment, because they have a lot of people away on their breaks. But they are also friends of mine... so on one hand, I hate to bother them, knowing how busy they are, when I had suspicions that it was a problem with our network, and not with the actual VSAT. But on the other hand, I had tried everything I know how to do, and couldn't for the life of me figure it out... and had 20 people on the compound asking me when the Internet was going to come back.

So I broke down and called. And the one guy there gave me at least something to start with, so I could plug my computer directly into the VSAT and get an SOS email out to our organization's IT guys in all their far flung corners of the universe!

Anyways, to make a boring story short... one of my IT buddies in the UK got back to me at our lunch break with exactly the information I needed to make things work! I felt a bit like a big dork, because it's something I should have figured out on my own, and in fact, when my UK IT buddy was here several months ago, he even mentioned to me what to do in this particular situation... I had just forgotten! Anyways, he said the key words that clicked in my brain, and we were up and running again!

I spent some more time later this afternoon fixing things up even more, as what I did over the lunch hour was a bit of a patch. Won't get into the details, though all you geeks out there are salivating to know what happened, I know!

Anyways, that was taken care of, but there was no electricity for most of the day. SO we were up and down and on and off the generator, which isn't good for anything, I don't think.

But to celebrate the end of our meetings, we went off to a new-ish Chinese restaurant and stuffed ourselves silly :) It was so tasty. We were going to end off the evening with ice cream at our favourite cafe. Well, ok, it's pretty much the only place to get ice cream over here. But alas. It was all barred shut! So, no ice cream. Of course, our roads are still closed, so we had to bounce around in the truck through all the muddy tracks to find our way there. On the way home, we saw an SUV that had gone head first into a ditch. Well, let me rephrase that... he had gone head first into a cavern in the middle of the road! His nose was stuck in the hole up to the doors! When we saw it, there was a crane there, trying to lift the SUV out of the hole!

Then we came back, all sweaty from the evening, and went to take our baths. But of course, there was no water. Seems there's a problem with the water pump. So no water has been pumped up to the water tank in who knows how long... and we have a compound full of people! I held the flashlight while Richard rummaged through his stuff to find an old bit of an old pump that was there to see if it would fit the part that's broken on the new pump. He finally found what he was looking for attached to an old bit of pipe in the dirt, in a planter next to the bore hole. After wiping the dirt away, he found that it wasn't the actual part that he needed. So much for that idea. So Richard went roaring off into the moon light (it was after 9pm already) to see if any of the shops were open. He was soon back, as there was no electricity in town, so the shops all closed already.

So, no water tonight. At least we have a big barrel full of water, which is supposed to be filled with rain water during the rainy season, but was filled with bore hole water before. So at least we have some water stored up, which puts us in better shape than we were before when there were problems with the water!

So everyone went to line up with their buckets this evening. We had quite a line up at the water barrel, but thankfully, no one tried to butt into the line, so no fights broke out! I hauled a few buckets of water over to our house (of course, our house is the farthest away from the water barrel, and I have certainly not yet learned the fine womanly art of water hauling, so it was quite the effort... causing me to work up even more of a sweat, which is going to require more of that water to wash away. So am I farther ahead? I'm not sure about that.

Anyways, it's now 10:38 pm and I have been plunged into darkness because the generator has been turned off. So I'd best go throw a couple of cups of water over my head to wipe some of the stickiness of the sweat away, and I'll crawl under my mossy net in order to start the day over again tomorrow!

It's Maundy Thursaday today, but alas, there's no water to wash anyone's feet except my own. But I did sort of miss having the evening marked by something. I hate to admit it, too, but tomorrow morning, I have a few other meetings planned, as the folks we need to meet with are going back to their respective homelands on the weekend. So it's tomorrow or never... but hopefully I'll be able to take the afternoon off to do something to mark the Good Friday. Any ideas of what I can do?!

Anyways, whatever happens, I'm sure it won't be boring!