Tears of joy

Elation!

Pure unmitigated happiness!

And yes, I almost went to tears when I was told that, as of today, Maliana, and all of Bobonaro district, will now have 24/7 electricity!!!!

M and I screamed and laughed with joy and hugged each other...only to be told to shush by our STAE colleagues who seem to be completely unfazed by the idea of having electricity ALL THE TIME!

We have light!! The light bulbs are on during the day, without the horrible and tiring noise of the generator!! Could this be true?! I really didn't think I would see this happen before I left!

Seriously, you cannot, or maybe you can, imagine how our life here in Maliana is going to change. How everyone's lives will change and with it their standards of living!

Electricity all day here means (for us anyways):

1. No longer showering in the dark in the morning or waiting for the light to come to shower at night;

2. No longer having to worry about food going bad because the fridge has been without electricity for more than one day;

3. Being able to use the oven during the day, the microwave (albeit being another luxury we do not have in our house but if we did we could!), the blender to make morning smoothies, the toaster for morning toast!!!

4. No longer being bored on the weekends because it was too hot to go outside and your computer didn’t have enough battery to watch movies all day - we can now actually watch more than one movie in a row during the day!!

5. Being able to turn on the fans during the day when it gets too hot - it's a tropical country for goodness sake, it IS too hot all the time!

6. And most importantly, no longer running out of water because our guards forgot to pump the tank during the night!!! We now have boundless amounts of running water!!

I really could go on!!

On the negative side though, this might mean that the Timorese will now have their music blasting at all hours of the day or that their parties never have to end with the shutting off of electricity! But I will remain optimistic and think, no, actually having electricity all the time now just means that they can have their parties, but they can have them more often and shorter since electricity is now a given and you no longer have to drink up every last hour of it as if you're afraid it will go out...because it won't!

And the funny thing is that just yesterday, we didn't have light until about 9pm, which is already more than 2 hours late. We had to use the generator, which eventually ran out of gasoline in a slow dying spurt and we were left in the dark with our flashlights, trying to play cards...because what else can you do when you know you can only have one light bulb and the fridge on in order to conserve energy! We even mentioned...maybe it's because they're changing the fuses (or whatever it is that you need to change in order to have electricity all the time) and it was probably that!

If only you could imagine how happy I am...with electricity!! It truly was one of man's greatest discoveries. I'm actually just upset that the Bobonaro residents don't seem to fathom the huge step that has been taken in their quality of life! They should be screaming for joy alongside me!

On the other hand, how sneaky is it of Xanana to do this three days before elections!! When people go to vote at 7am this Saturday, one thing they will most likely remember is the fact that they got dressed and "showered" (I actually have no idea of the morning cleaning rituals of the Bobonaro citizen!) with light that day. I'm guessing CNRT will have quite a big result in Bobonaro come Sunday's tabulation, let's see...

But for now, let there be light!!