Meri came back to work this morning; her children are feeling better but Mr. Iddrisu was out today. Mr. Iddrisu called Nazo this morning and told him he would not be coming to work because he was sick. We have no idea what is wrong with him and he does not have electricity at his house so his phone is usually dead. I jokingly told Steve that I knew what was wrong with him; it was “Ramadan Fever”. This is the 6th day of the Muslims 28 day fast and everyone is feeling the effects of not eating but especially the effects of not drinking anything. It was hot again today; the high temperature was 108 degrees.
This morning the men from VRA, the electric company came to our area to check the meters. We have had no problem with our meter and we are now using the pre-paid meters so we have no more worries with the electric company since we went to pre-paid meters. Anyway, we should have no worries but today when they checked the meter they accused Steve of tampering with the meter box and stealing electricity from the electric company. You can only imagine how well that went over with Steve and the workers that were standing around. They went on to say that they could tell he had tampered with the meter box because the green plastic adhesive that is supposed to be covering the screws was not there. Please we have never seen any green plastic anything covering the screws. There is a security lock on the meter and it was still intact. They said they would have to disconnect the meter. They went on to say that we only bought 25 Cedis of electricity in January. Well, Duh! We are never here for ½ of December, all of January and ½ of February so of course we do not buy electricity during those months. We buy enough at the end of November to carry the mission house through our leave time. Steve came in the house and pulled the electrical receipts for January, February and March; they totaled 3,100 Cedis which is a lot of money even by US standards. They told us that we had to take a picture of the meter and go to their office and talk to their boss. Their boss checked the account and he saw how much we actually were paying for electricity. He said that he did not see any reason to change out the meter or that he did not think we had tampered with the meter. He said that he would send someone out to put the green plugs on the screw heads. How annoying! Hopefully that will be the last we hear about that!
Steve has made a couple trips to the electrical shop today trying to replace the switch on one of the security poles. The first switch he bought was not big enough to hold the wires that are feeding the light. He hopes to get it finished before it gets too dark to see.
Take care and have a great day!
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
