Things got real screwy yesterday.  Electricity still off.  Our landlord came with a professor.  Silly me, I thought this was the leading electricity professor at the top university in Cameroon.  Turns out he teaches at the  high school level.  Seems to be a relative of our landlord.  Without so much as testing wire number one, he declared that all the wiring in our house is bad.  It is the wrong kind and installed in a bad way.  Very dangerous.  Fire could break out at any moment.  Burn the (cement block) house to the ground.  Burn all our treasures.  Serious problem.  But not to worry, he could save the day.  If our landlord were to pay him a mere 4,000,000 F he could remove all the wires in the house and replace them with new ones.  It would take a month to do the job, but he would be willing to tackle it.  That's $8,000 in U.S. money.  Slightly overpriced.  And couple that with the fact that the wires in the house are A-OK.  Jim tried to put in his two cents worth, but his expertise was not valued.

So today Jim asked Joseph, our night guard, who is also an electrician, to come and help him with more diagnosis.  They had already spent one day on the problem.  Sure enough, before long they discovered the problem.  And Joseph was able to fix it without spending one dime on the project!! The landlord was quite impressed and says he will not let the professor continue with his plans.  We don't know what will happen when he finally learns he is out 4,000,000 F.  Don't want to be around for that one!

So we have lights all over the house.  Fans.  Washing machine works.  Printer.  Computer.  Charging phones.  Do you know how many things depend on electricity?  It was only by using a generator that we kept from loosing a lot of frozen food.  Long live electricity!