Dark Night (Not Related to Batman)

Saturday morning breakfast for my Sudanese colleagues .... lamb dish with the white french loaf. The guy in black shirt is a Filipino nationality and he seems to be enjoying the most.

Sudanese people have their breakfast around 11am, lunch at 3pm-4pm and dinner at 9pm.

Out of a sudden, electricity was discontinued around 5pm .... common situation in Sudan. In no time, we went out to start our generator.

As it's winter season, it's not really that hot compared to being in the office.










Failed attempts in getting the generator started. We 'sacked' the first fella. Next guy volunteered his 'expertise'.

Apparently, the generator's battery seems to be quite weak to kick start.











Nazril suggested to bring in our Mitsubishi Pajero's battery to be connected to the generator's battery, something like to jump start. Amin was the supervisor.

It was not a simple process as we borrowed the jump start cable from a car workshop serviced /operated by a few Malaysian chinese car mechanics. The journey to and back from workshop was about 20 to 30 minutes.






Such power generator is a common thing in a garden's compound or set up just outside the main gate. One of the most saleable products in Sudan as power failure is very very very common in Sudan.

When electricity kicked in around 8pm plus, our house caretaker switched off the generator. Phew!!!! at last.

Managed to prepare our dinner and not to our surprise, the electricity was cut off again ....... gone in the midst of our dinner.

How to start our generator now .... the car workship has closed by now.

We just need to go down to get it started as we have missed few English Premier League football matches that were played earlier and not willing to miss another one.

Our caretaker's friend that was around decided to bring out our car's battery again and tried to jump start our generator with a makeshift cable ............ so thin and we did say that it could backfire and short circuit something along the way.

They decided to proceed saying mafi mushkilla (no problem).

We decided to strategise everyone's strength and weakness and got two smokers to continue smoking as we need those second hand smoke to 'kill' the mosquitoes that were feasting on us.

True enough, there was big spark when our two Sudanese friends tried their luck. They were shocked!

Somehow ............. somehow ....... that one big spark did provide a small heartbeat into the generator's battery.

The generator started without a fuss and the next thing we worried about was was there enough diesel for the generator to burn throughout the night.

Final check ............... all accepted .... but we still missed our football matches as the electricity generated was too much for our cable TV's decoder. It short circuited and malfunctioned on us! No more TV for us.

Life in Sudan is very unpredictable. We fight fire everyday that comes from different directions that can't be detected ............ hehe
Tags: Electricity, Power Generator, Cable TV, Short Circuit