Power Outages

Here's the thing about a developing country: sometimes the basics are not so basic. Cambodia does not generate enough electricity to power the whole country. Some is bought from Vietnam, some is produced domestically, and when there isn't enough, well, the power goes out. In the hot season (March/April/May), Cambodia routinely (as in every day) shuts off power to different parts of the country, or even the city. The blackouts can be anywhere between a half hour to five or six hours, any time between 8 am and 11 pm. This makes everything hotter (life without a fan is awful), more inconvenient (get whatever you can out of the fridge as fast as you can), and a little suspenseful (when will the outage be today?). We've grown accustomed to power outages, keeping flashlights handy, learning to do things in the dark, even simply announcing it (oh, power's out again) instead of groaning. Even though it isn't the hot season anymore, it's been pretty warm the past few weeks, and we've had sporadic outages.

Yesterday, we (Deanna and I) came home for lunch. I went into the bathroom, and as I turned on the light, we heard a pop, and the light went out. It wouldn't turn back on, and I realized that the light in my bedroom wasn't working either. In fact, the power was out altogether. Chalking it up to poor timing-- thinking I had unwittingly chosen the exact moment of a power cut to hit the light, we went about the lunch routine and sweltered for an hour before heading back to the office. It's not uncommon for the power to go out somewhere between when we walk in the door for lunch and the moment we decide something needs to be microwaved. Life is cruel like that sometimes.

By the time Deanna went home at 4:30, the power was still out. It was out when I got home at 5:15, when our friends came over for dinner at 5:30, and as we were lighting candles to help brighten things in the ever increasing twighlight at 6:10. While it isn't unusual for the power to go out for such a stretch, what was odd was that the neighborhood was responding unusually. When the power is out, everyone gathers outside to talk, we hear the whir and hum of generators, and once, after a really long cut, the whole complex cheered when the lights came on. As we peered into our neighbor's homes, we noticed they were turning on lights and watching television. Curious.

With a glance at each other, we examined the lone fuse box for the apartment. It's not a very complicated system, I guess, because there is only one breaker switch. As neither of us are engineers, electricians, or particularly adept at construction of any kind, we had not expected that flipping the bathroom switch would blow the fuse for the entire apartment. Oops. A quick flip of the switch, and the lights came back on. Just in time to illuminate our embarrassed faces and ensure that our friends had a hearty laugh at our expense.