Christmas with the Grinch

Christmas Eve our main computer gave up...it decided that Christmas time was a perfect time to put everything into perspective and maybe it was time to retire. So now we are relegated to 1 computer, but I am kind of enjoying only having the one computer...It's slow and we can't really talk on Skype with it, but it's given me the idea that perhaps we can do with only one computer. But now of course I want to upgrade to one that can be our media center. We had threatened to disconnect the internet from the office one, but hadn't actually done anything about it and then the office computer died...so maybe it's a sign.

We ran out of water on Christmas Eve. We have these 3 water tanks behind our house and the embassy has employees who drive the water truck and deliver water to our houses. This is for our running water, this is what comes out of our tap and lets us have water for showers, dishes, laundry, etc... Now, because they would rather have overtime than visit with their families on holidays, they don't have forethought to fill up all the tanks before the holidays. And because of this mythical water shortage they are only filling the tanks up about 1/4. When they finally came out on Christmas Eve (8 hours after they had been called) Dylan asked them to please fill up 2 of the tanks instead of only giving us a little water so that we don't have to call them out again over the holidays. To conserve our water, I started harvesting the rinse water from the washing machine for water to flush the toilets. Dylan and Pamela both looked amt me like I was nuts, but agreed to do so so that we don't run out of water so fast. While the embassy will bring us as much water as we need, I always feel tremendous guilt when we have to call out some Ghanaian who most likely doesn't have water in his own house, so that he can fill up our tanks. Now because this IS Ghana, I am sure the guy who drives the water truck does have some water because he will take it off the top for himself.

We also have no diesel fuel for the generator and apparently there is a shortage of diesel as well so it was a blessing that we did not lose power over the 4 day weekend because we would have been hot and dirty - since the water pump doesn't work when the power is out.

More on the Christmas stuff later.