In Rutanda: the logistics

I am in Rutanda and working on the project. Will talk about that in the next post. This post is about the logistics of working in this part of the world. I have a driver whose name I haven't quite figured out and a translator whose name is Zachary. We are all staying at the "Rutanda Lodge." I have a picture of the little round hut with a grass roof which I am staying in. There is a rather primitive shower which delivers cold water only so the workers bring a bucket of hot water in the morning if one wants. The cold shower actually feels pretty good in the afternoon, assuming the workers remembered to run the pump to keep the tank filled up when the electricity was on, which theoretically is on from 6 pm to 10 pm. I think it came on shortly after 6 once. Most of the time it is closer to 7. Part of the problem is that one of the workers goes to get the gasoline for the generator on a bicycle each day. We are not quite sure why the owner hasn't figured out a more efficient system than that but I guess we should be thankful that the power is on at all. Tonight we thought we were out of luck because the man came back on his bicycle and it was clear that he had failed to get any gasoline by the way the containers were bouncing on the bicycle. But there must have been some left in the generator tank because it is after 9 and the power is still on. And they did turn on the pump as soon as the generator started up so the water tank is again full and we are sitting pretty with both power and water. I may take a cold shower before I go to bed just to celebrate. The power situation was particularly complicated for me because the one outlet in my room was not working. So I had to go up to the little dining hut to charge up my computer, cell phone, camera battery, etc. I had to have a triage system to decide which was most critical in terms of battery power left and need. We took a trip today to a larger town a couple of hours away and ran into the owner of the lodge while we were there. Zachary filled him in on some of the problems we were having and lo and behold when the power came on this evening my outlet was fixed. So maybe some things will be better. We will see.