Life Without Electricity

So it has been exactly a week now that the island has been without electricity and if I’m honest I think it will be the first of many, knowing how long things take in Seychelles. Back in the UK, having no electric was usually for a few hours or at worse 24, may be possibly 48 when your mum and dad used to say don’t open the fridge for too long or lift the freezer lid, but then we always knew that as if by magic the electricity company would get it sorted and with a flick of a switch normality would be resumed. It was always kinda exciting when you were allowed to have a candle to read a book by in the absence of the television and you could pretend that you lived in a time when there was no electricity, like in some of the dramas on the TV. But when there is no magical electricity company that flicks a switch and normality returns, the story is a little different:
The main added complication we have is the climate, where the sun shines so intense that the sand is just too hot to walk on and the humidity makes all the envelopes stick together without licking them. This means the main major difficulty we now have is keeping food, with inefficient fridges and freezers that let ants in once the temperature raises a few degrees; it is a constant battle to stop either food being eaten or going mouldy and smelly.

There are now distinctive dead smells around our house, where the communal freezer lives, of gone off food and dirty water, which runs out of the back of the freezer as it defrosts. The operation of the small portable generator on and off throughout the day does not stop the residue water from coming out of the bottom that sticks of rotten fish. This putrid liquid oozes out onto the floor in the back office and has been successfully attracting an array of flies and insects and doesn’t smell good in 36°C!!

But having had a moan and said all this I really don’t mind, we generally wake up when it is light and go to bed when it is dark, any dark evening is currently lit up by the full moon which lights the whole island and silhouettes the bats and birds, the palm leaves shine and the beach glows – it is beautiful, especially now with no light pollution from the island at all.

However it is quite apparent that Europeans find it rather more exciting using candles and torches, it can become a way of life, than the locals. We had a new ranger from Mahe start last week and it isn’t the best introduction to life here; no running water which you can kinda cope with, but no electric, no fridge, just a communal freezer that is kept chilled and the smelly water that runs out of the bottom of it. But worst of all seems to be the island recently acquired a TV which was very popular with rangers and volunteers, but now sits in the corner teasing – and there is a now a lot of hope resting on one of our rangers, Brian, who in a previous life was an electrician, as he now does his best to harness the energy from the sun for power.

I’m sure Brian will find a way; we have got what often feels like an endless supply of sun to provide solar power with hardly a cloud in the sky most days, which we already use to charge up batteries and phones easily.

Cooking can be a bit of a challenge though and if not achieved before the sun goes down does often needs the assistance of a head torch, but shearwaters can regularly kamikaze into the kitchen attracted by the bright light. As for washing up in the dark, I have given up and the resident crabs deal with most of the leftovers on the plates and pans until the morning.

But the one thing that no freezer and inefficient fridges mean we have the perfect excuse to go out fishing everyday and today brought in a Dorado – my what a whopper!!