The Electric Key

Monday started off at school. Classes went well; I taught about Graph Theory and Dale's students started their in-class sermons. I usually give a little sermon every day (nuclear power, living on the coast, driving like maniacs, etc.) so maybe I should join his preaching class. My students turned in their homework and I turned back a couple of assignments that I graded over the weekend.

At lunch we fought off the flies. For some reason the flies are out in great number and all of these places leave doors wide open. We have started to leave the caps of our pop bottles loosely on the top to keep the flies from invading our Fanta. I also use a napkin on the top of my tea to keep them out. The apartments have screens on all of the doors and windows but for some reason, the little cafeteria at school does not. We may have to try the other cafeteria which appears to have screens.

Now the electric part. Our electric meter shows how many kilowatt-hours remain before it turns off the power. We got down to 8.9 KW-HR on Monday morning and we use about 10 per day. That meant I had to go to the power company, get in line and give the lady 100,000 Tshillings. This bought me 352 more Kilowatt-Hours for our meter. I treked back from the store and entered the 20 digit number and the pound sign and voila! we had 361 Kilowatt-Hours to use. I have also been monitoring the power usage on the Stiles' apartment and the Bega Kwa Bega apartment (A-5 and A-3) and made a spread sheet to show how much we have used in the last couple of weeks and when their power will run out. The basic attitude is to let it run out and then go to dinner at the nice restaurant up the hill. We are trying to limit our restaurant eating to once a week so letting the power run out on Saturday is not a good idea. After entering all the data I found that A-5 and A-3 will run out of electricity on Tuesday next week and our apartment (C-6) will run out at 7 AM on Monday December 17th -- the day we leave. I plan to add some more electricity so that we don't go dark the minute we try to take showers the morning we depart.

Now the key part. Our offices at the university have skeleton keys. Caleb threw the keys down to Dale to get some supplies for dinner and the his keys hit the pavement--shattering the key to Dale's office. We now have a skeleton key in three pieces. We need to get into Dale's office on Tuesday because all of our graded homework is in there and my big paper sheets are in their for class. We thought of a number of ways to weld the key together. (Of course it is pot metal and cannot be welded or brazed or soldered.) We thought that if we wait until a lightning storm and then put up a kite we might get a good strike to come down the wire and weld the key together (Ben Franklin eat your heart out). But that technique was vetoed. We will have to get someone to let us in at school and then make another trip to Saalim Keys and have the fellow hand cut and file a new key. This should be fun.

Sorry to hear that it is cold and snowy in Minnesota. We saw snow on Skype yesterday and couldn't really understand it. Every morning is bright and sunny and 70 F every afternoon is strong sun and maybe a few puffy clouds and 85 F. The weather is going to be the hard part to leave. Talk to all of you soon.