Lights Out

Here’s the current power outage schedule for my little corner of Kathmandu:

Sunday: 5am-8am, 1pm-5pm

Monday: 10am-1pm, 5pm-10pm

Tuesday: 10:30am-3pm, 8pm-11pm

Wednesday: 12pm-5pm

Thursday: 8am-12pm, 7pm-9pm

Friday: 7am-10:30am, 5:30-9:30

Saturday: 6am-9am, 3pm-8pm

In other words, there are scheduled power outages at least 5 hours per day, more on most days. Different zones follow a different schedule; thus, if you happen to be standing on our rooftop looking at the neighborhood to the north of us, you may suddenly see it plunged into darkness when their power is cut off, or conversely illuminated when it comes back on.

It’s nice to know the schedule; my host family wrote it down for me just yesterday, after I’d been here for a week. Prior to that, I wasn’t aware that there was a schedule that was being followed. Now, knowing the schedule allows me to plan my hours of light and darkness a little more effectively. For instance, I can make sure that I’m not in the middle writing a long e-mail when the power cuts off and knocks out the Internet router. I can map out my hours of study and my hours of “hanging out” with a greater sense of predictability.

I do a lot of hanging out in the evenings with my host family when the lights are out. There’s not much to do, but we eat dinner in the kitchen (by flashlight, or by the light of the one wavering bulb that can be kept alight by the family’s tiny generator), or sit on the terrace in the cool evening breeze and talk. The kids do their homework by flashlight or by the fading sunlight. I listen to the adults’ conversations and try to figure out what they’re saying, going by the 5%-10% of the words and grammatical constructions that I can actually understand. Sometimes my attention wanders and the language-listening becomes a very imaginative exercise. 

My hosts can hardly believe my tales of life in the US, where I enjoy 24-hour electricity and high-speed Internet (just yesterday, I showed Didi the website where I order my groceries in the US, and she flipped out). Sometimes I can hardly believe it myself. Here in Nepal, the coming and going of the light sets a very different rhythm, a very different pace of life. It’s slower, and sometimes seems unpredictable, but it has its charm.