Been a little while since I did a blog post... I guess I
have gotten so swept away by this culture that I have forgotten about all of
you back home. Haha just kidding! Hope everyone is doing well.
Sometimes I just feel that little anecdotes are the best
way to give you insight into how things run around here. Hence “The Long and
Winding Road for the 5 amp fuse”.
The electricity here in Tanzania is “dirty” (if you have electricity
at all… I am in the minority group for having it. Lucky me!). This means that
there are occasionally power surges. These power surges can destroy electrical
equipment if left unchecked. Hence the “Voltage Regulator Box”. It acts to stop
surges before they affect equipment. But
sometimes there are current surges and like most electrical equipment, there is
a fuse that gets “sacrificed” to break the current and hence protect the rest
of the apparatus. This fuse blew a little while back. I finally went shopping
for one last week.
One tiny fuse. Something so common. Yet I knew going into
it that it would be a several hour journey to find it. You can’t just read the
signs above the isles as you would at Home Depot or Lowes. But journeys of this
sort, although long and occasionally frustrating, are quite fun and adventurous
from my perspective.
To start, I went to the section of town where most of the
electronic stores are. When I say stores, I mean 10 ft by 10ft overcrowded hole
in the wall sheds that are all linked together on the dusty and hot streets of
Tanga. I go around from “shed” to “shed” looking for the fuse, using my choppy
Swahili and holding up the one that has been blown. It isn’t like I just go
from one store to another at random. Rather, one store owner directs me to the
next one, who then directs me to another one, who then directs me back to the
one I just came from. Ha! It’s on store number five that I finally make a break
through. A store owner who is working on a chip for a broken CD player directs
me to a store several blocks away that he has confidence in. I end up making a
wrong turn and turn around when I realize I am moving from the commercial
section of town to the residential section. I finally find the store and this
store owner does not have the fuse. He then directs me to another store (store
number seven). He is positive this place will have it. But I get there and it’s
closed for the day. I let my hands hang over the metal casing that is brought
down over the store front to protect it when it’s closed. A local sees my
frustration and says we can go and find the owner. We end up going to his
house, which was in the residential section of town where I had originally
gotten lost.
The owner says he will come open the shop, which I am
grateful for. After a half hour of sitting on a street curb and talking in
choppy Swahili to the local, the owner comes and opens up. I am looking for a 5
amp fuse. He has 4 and 6. Haaa! Just my day. I take the 4 and the 6 and find
out online later that it is ok to use a lower rated fuse on your electronics
but not a higher rating. I also talk to my dad about this when he calls as he
is familiar with these types of things. So here I am typing to you with the
voltage box back up and running smoothly
again! Using a 4 amp fuse instead of the 5. It probably won’t last as long as a
5 would, but we will see. Hope all of you in the states are doing well!
