Our rainy season has turned into a drought and with a large percent of the electricity being produced by hydroelectric plants, we have come to appreciate the saying “s’ka shi, s’ka drita” or “no rain, no lights”.

Now, since everyone knows there is a problem and even the government’s official position is there is an energy crisis, you would think some actions to conserve would be promoted and a schedule of power availability would be produced.  You would think…

No, power just comes and goes at this time of year.  We remember in Peqin, every day from 1 until 5, there would be power outages: some days for the full time period, some days for part of the period and some days not at all.  But now, we just loose power, but there does seem to be a pattern emerging and we are in the zone that looses power between 12 and 5.

Since it gets dark about 4:30, it is usually dark when we get power back.  That was the case last weekend.  However, about 30 minutes after we received power, the lights went off again.  We just continue, acting like this is normal.  After about 30 minutes of working by candle light, Criss notices the streetlight is on, but we still have no lights.  So he walks down to the bottom floor to check the fuse box and sure enough, we have tripped the breaker and for the last half hour we have been sitting in the darkness of our own making.  It seems we cannot have the washer, dryer and oven on at the same time, combined they just draw too much current.  It is a good thing we have streetlights.