Dear Friends,
In Uganda, the electricity is not very reliable. It is often off for whole days at a time. Recently, our power has been off a lot. It seems there has been a problem with the connection from the pole to our building. Twice, we have had to hire a linesman to come out and work on the connection up on the pole. Yesterday, our power went off during a heavy rain storm (as we are now in the rainy season). It came back on briefly in the evening, then went off again. At 9:30 pm, it came on again, giving us hope that we would have power through the night, but then it went back off for the rest of the night! Now, at 10:00am in the morning, our power is still off. We were told that the problem this time is from the transformer that provides power to our neighborhood.
When power is off, our internet is down, we can’t use our printer, and our laptop batteries soon run down, so it is hard to get our office work done. We also can’t charge our phones, and food spoils in the fridge. Last night, Sylvia went out and sat in the truck for an hour so that she could charge her phone from the cigarette lighter.
When power is off through the night, we have to use candles, and we can’t run our fans. Running a fan in our bedroom at night serves three purposes: 1. It keeps us cool in this tropical climate. 2. It helps to keep malaria mosquitoes away as they don’t like to fly through the strong breeze from the fan. (We also have a mosquito net around our bed.) 3. It drowns out background noises like cars and trucks passing on our road, dogs barking, people playing loud music, and the late night and pre-dawn Muslim calls to prayer. (NOT the most beautiful sound in the world!)
In our old home, we had a bank of solar panels, deep cycle batteries, and two inverters that ran most things in the house. But those batteries are now completely worn out. We need to buy a couple of new deep cycle batteries and bring the inverters from our old home in order to have a backup system here in our new apartment. Two good deep cycle batteries here will cost $800. If you would like for us to be able to sleep better and be more productive as missionaries, would you consider sending a special contribution towards the purchase of the backup batteries we need? Thank you so much!
Yours in Uganda,
Russ & Sylvia Daniels
Email: rsdaniels.uganda@gmail.com
