I had a perfect opening line for this blog, but just as I sat down to write the line it was ruined. That line was going to be, It is nearly 5 p.m., and it is dark outside. It is also dark inside, because, once again, the power is off. But the power just came on and that line has been lost.
For the past month the power has gone off in our apartment building at random times and for random lengths of time probably every day. At first that must sound like a terrible problem or at least a great inconvenience, but after a few days and a little creativity, you get used to it and just accept it as a fact of life. Years ago I was in the capital of Honduras and it had problems with power. But those problems were systemic and predictable, to the point that in the newspaper every week a schedule was printed that indicated at what time of day the power would be shut off to what part of the city. That made sense. You could plan ahead. But in Tirana that is not the case, it is unpredictable, and that demands a different kind of preparedness.

The unpredictability surprises me sometimes. Yesterday, for example, the power in our building was off much of the afternoon, while the buildings all around us were brightly lit. Then in the late afternoon our power went back on. A couple hours later, darkness had fallen and I was in our main room reading when I heard a bevy of cries of surprise from the high school across the street. Their power had gone out and hundreds of students were plunged into blackness. Today our power has been off most of the afternoon, and the power across the street in some shops has also. But the school has remained lit and students have been dutifully taking notes by the miracle of electric lighting. We were told that since we are right next to the American Embassy our outages would be rare. That may be true for our area, but it is not true for our building. In total darkness I can often look out of our window to the well lit embassy buildings and grounds. Maybe I should be comforted that the machinery of the US government is going on unhindered. Maybe…

As I said, the unpredictability does foster creativity. For one thing most kitchen ranges in the country have both electric and gas burners, and everyone has a tank of gas in their kitchen to run the gas burners. That means that you can still cook if there is no electricity. Clever idea, I guess, but when we turn our gas on it begins to smell up the room so we do not use it. I could probably get a wrench or take the range apart and figure out where a leak is, but the other option is what Nancy and I take—when the power goes out we go out too. Places to eat abound in our area, and there is always an internet café that still has electricity, and between them we have most of our needs met and enough time can usually be passed for the electricity to find its way back to our building.
Another creative piece of adaptation that we have learned is how to cope with the fact that when the power goes out the toilets do not flush. That is no problem for a short time, but over an extended period this is an obvious negative. The reason the water does not work is that it is pumped up to the top of our building every day and then its way down is regulated by some electronic means that I do not understand. In any case the net effect is that when the power is off the water is also off, and by the way this arrangement also means the water is off every day for a time while it is being pumped up. We drink bottled water, so the lack of water is not a big problem that way. And we could use the bottled water for cooking. But the toilet is something else. So we have a good size bucket filled with water standing in reserve—ready to provide what a toilet needs to operate as it should—with or without electricity.

What else? Well, we always carry a small flashlight to get to our apartment via our interior and windowless stairwell. Some light comes in from the front door that is left open when the power is out, but by the first floor that is lost in the turns and pitch darkness rules. Some people forget their flashlight, which explains why we sometimes find a trail of burnt matches littering the stairwell after an outage. Then there is the heat. Our rooms are heated by individual electric heaters, and obviously they stop when the power stopsr. We have great windows through which sunlight pours all day--when there is sunlight--, and since most days have been sunny we have not had a serious heating problem. But I guess we will face that when the time comes, and add another sweater or two.
And, of course, there is the elevator. Nancy and I early on decided not to use the elevator so we could get a bit of exercise walking up the three floors to our apartment. But then one day when the power went out I could hear someone knocking from inside the elevator, which was stalled between floors. I wanted to help, but there was nothing I could do and my inability to speak any Albanian would render my words of comfort completely incomprehensible and probably disconcerting to those inside the elevator. So I did nothing and said nothing, but I did note another reason not to ever use the elevator…

Now when I approach our building I listen for the sound of gas-powered generators. The clubs, cafes and stores all have them. Some are small and need to be started manually while others are very large and just kick in automatically when the power goes off. But if they are humming away then I know to get my flashlight out—or to head into one of the cafes for a cup of coffee and wait. Eventually, as was the case when I began this blog, the power does go back on. Then the things you really need power for, like flushing the toilet or charging your cell phone or laptop, can be accomplished. But those things can always wait. They do wait. They have to wait. And that is not all that bad. After all, Ecclesiastes reminds us that, There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven… Ecclesiastes 3:1.