July 2008 Archives

Guess what happened yesterday evening? We ran out of power! Escom is our electricity supplier and how it works is you basically have a device in the house from which you can read how many prepaid units you have left. You can buy units at Escom or at some fuel stations, you just have to watch the units to ensure you don't run out. And that, of course, is what we did not do.

....And so the lights went out. We had used the last unit at about 9pm that evening.

You might expect that for two people who work on a project with solar power, that such an event poses no problems. Although we have products that can deal with these circumstances, we had no converted light bulbs, nor a paraffin lamp conversion LED unit (our two key lighting products!) in the house, as we recently moved all materials and products to our new office! So we had to use candles and a paraffin lamp for the rest of the evening. Embarrassing. And in the morning Dave had to use charcoal to prepare our breakfast.

Today, we'll bring a couple of light products back to the house I think...

More from us later,

Carl

Carl and Daniel

Let me introduce Daniel. Daniel works three days a week at our house. Before he came here, he worked for Stephanie, a Belgian student who was doing her thesis over here. Stephanie asked us if we needed somebody really good to help out at the house. Since we were tired of doing our own laundry (and the advice of a Belgian is always trustworthy!) Dave and I were happy to offer Daniel a job. He works 3 days a week, so he still has time for his studies.

We have no regrets that Daniel is with us. He's great. He does the laundry, cleans the house, does the dishes, takes care of the garden and goes to the market for us, which means that Dave and I can totally focus on the solar project.

Daniel, helping in the SolarAid garden

What's also great is that Daniel is very interested in the solar energy. Last week he went back to his home village and took a solar panel and an LED converted paraffin lamp, so he could demonstrate to his family and friends. He came back with great news! People were very enthusiastic about our products and he has several customers waiting for him when he goes back. Maybe he'll turn out to be a fantastic sales person.

Until next time,

Carl

Here's Daniel demonstrating a solar-powered radio