WEEKLY WRAP-UP

Struggling With Solar Power — Still Lacking Electricity In Uganda

My week in photos — Week 12 — June 2–June 8, 2022

Our woes with electricity continue.

I forgot to mention in my last update that we had purchased a solar panel, battery, and inverter.

The place that we are staying in right now has no plug-in electricity. In fact, they have no traditional electricity at all.

For those wondering, we have no fridge or any other appliance for that matter either!

The lights are run off of 2 batteries that are hooked to solar panels, and the plugs are all linked to a generator. So we can only get plug-in power when the generator is running.

We knew this coming back here, but it has still been very annoying.

Last year, anytime we would run the generator, I cringed. I hated the blaring loudness of it all, overshadowing the peaceful cicadas and evening bird song. I hated that we were polluting the environment with not only emissions but also noise. It rattled my nerves.

Plus I hated that we were spending MONEY on gas!

At one point, we had rented a small room in the village for some building supplies that we were using to develop the community garden. It cost just $8/month, and it came with electricity.

Most days, we would head in there, walking a km or two to get there, would plug in our devices in the morning, then would walk back at the end of the day to retrieve them. Many times, unfortunately, we would arrive back to find that the power had been shut off all day. All of this was in a desperate attempt to not run the generator, but often times we had to anyways.

By the end of our 6-month stay here, we were completely exhausted. But this is just one contributing factor to that. There were many.

This year, after running the generator for about a week, we decided that we were going to look into getting a small solar panel and battery, just big enough so that we could charge our devices. We have a laptop, cell phone, tablet, and battery pack.

We headed into Kasese, the nearest large-ish town to us, and did some price comparing. After finding a vendor that seemed to be honest with their pricing (we are constantly ripped off because we are foreigners), we went ahead and bought the small package of items.

A 40w solar panel, an inverter, and a battery.

The only advice she gave us was to charge it for a full day before using it.

Cool.

It cost us about $80USD, so not a huge investment, but would save us money on buying gas over the long run. Plus, we wouldn’t have to pollute the environment and ruin our blissful and peaceful evenings.

Gas, by the way, has also increased here in Uganda. In fact, it is as expensive, if not more so, than where I was living in Canada, which is crazy when you compare the costs of living.

Anyways, we did as the lady said and charged it up really well. On the first day, we plugged our power bar into it, then plugged all of our devices into it. It worked fine, though some of the plugs were hot.

But over the course of the next few days, the power bar started blinking its red light, meaning that it wasn’t getting enough power. So we cut back to plugging one thing in at a time. Some days it seems to work okay, but then on others I will check on my laptop; it is hot and the charge cord light is flashing, which can’t be a good thing.

Our host Jason called a friend who advised us to get the solar panel mounted properly facing up to the sun and keep our battery in our room. (I think I also forgot to mention that we have moved from the tent to a room with a bathroom, thankfully.) Before this, we had been carrying it around the yard all day, always trying to find a sunny spot for it. Apparently, putting the battery on the ground is not good as it can lose some of its charge back into the earth. At least that is what the guy told Jason.

So we went into Kasese and purchased wires so we could connect it out our back window up to the water tower behind our room, where we could mount the solar panel permanently.

Chris was too afraid that the rickety structure wouldn’t hold his 6'3" weight load, so I went up instead, saw, hammer, and panel in hand!

Even though the panel is in pretty much full sun all day, we still don’t seem to be getting the correct charge, and our battery is even sputtering out liquid from the top. We have done some reading and have learned that this can be from them overfilling it with water when we purchased it. That certainly could be a possibility because it has been doing that since the beginning. But other than that, we have no idea what we are doing.

If anyone as any advice for us, I would love to hear it!

So here we are, frustrated with it all again. We walked into town today to purchase gas for the generator, specifically to charge my laptop. The other devices seem to do fine, for now.

How annoying!

However, despite all of the electrical hoopla, we had a bit of a fun week. We had a good meeting with some of the village members and are moving towards a solution for the village with regards to bringing them water. We are reminded that nothing happens fast in Africa, so we are just taking things one day at a time to make sure that we come up with the correct solution for them.

Chris also taught his first-ever art class! We invited the children from the village to get a free class on perspective and drawing human bodies. It was a bit of a long go, and we were losing their attention at the end, but there were some real keener kids that made some great drawings. Art is not taught in Uganda to school children, at all, so this is a really rare opportunity for them to get this information.

Last year when we were here, we sent out a request to our friends and family to send the kids in the village Christmas presents. While many sent clothing and games, lots sent pens, pencils, and art supplies. So while we have been away, they have been doing some coloring and drawing with Jason, our host here at Elephant Home. So at least they had been practicing a bit. This class was just something to point them in the right direction.

It was a fun day and we really enjoyed it. We can see this becoming more of a regular thing as we travel around. After all, it fits into the Artistic Voyages brand very well.

Other than that we have been continuing our work in the garden plus working on our mural. The mural is really moving along now and we hope to be finished in about a week. Then we will be moving on to another project in Uganda.

This place will have electricity!

Thanks for reading and I hope that everyone has a great week!

xo Jill

Thanks so much for joining me in my week in photos. Dennett started this challenge in her publication Weeds & Wildflowers during the beginnings of the pandemic, and it has since grown to include many authors. Check out the amazing writing and photography of Anne | Erika | Jane | Eileen | Juan | David | Mia | Susan | LensAfield | Kim | Barbara | Diana | Barb | Sandra | Shruthi | Ellie | Pene | Olive | Gustavo | Penny | Scott | Sasha | Tracy | Lisa | June | K. Barrett | and of course our host Dennett.

I have put all of my weeks in photos into their own list:

More electricity-related articles:

Hi there, we are 2 Canadians, Jill and Chris from Artistic Voyages. We have been nomadic since 2017 living in numerous different countries, and experiencing the life and diversity of our planet on the ground and firsthand. We have now been on the African continent for over 2 years!

Subscribe to Medium through my referral link to get full access to my writing plus thousands of others! Plus sign up here to get my articles by email!

Join our adventure by hitting the links below!

Website | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Patreon| YouTube | Medium