We're all powerless here, except for the prez

The first time it happened was about a week after i'd moved into my flat, about 2-1/2 weeks after arriving in Baku. A not too terribly cold night, i'd taken a rambling, roundabout route home, soaking up the sights, sounds and odors of residential night life. When i got to my own street, i suddenly realized it was VERY dark; not dark as in there's no moonlight, but rather urban darkness, as in there's no electricity. My local butcher was conducting business by candlelight, other shops were using kerosene lanterns... clearly, this was not an unusual occurrence. Up four slights of stairs in total darkness - spooky but adrenalizing - when i entered the flat and looked out the balcony window, all i could do was laugh. Business owners and bars on my little side street were depending on paraffin stocks, but in the zone of City Hall, no voltage is spared to maintain Baku's image as a beacon of light shining on the shores of the Caspian's fossil fuel fortune.

i can't say that i hadn't been warned Azerbaijan has 'utility issues' and for the next few weeks, Wednesdays were my neighborhood power outage day. Other people i know here have either much less regularity or normalized daily shutdowns (no water from 9:00-17:00 every day of the week), so i was actually feeling somewhat blessed by the predictability of what was, overall, a relatively benign situation. However, i also realized on that first evening that loss of power means loss of water, because the water pumps installed to solve the low water pressure problem in apartment buildings here run on electricity. Without the pump, not a drop to drink. While that first night was kind of third world romantic-like, with the candles, 3 layers of clothing and Book I of The Iliad ('He sat himself down away from the ships with a face as dark as night, and his silver bow rang death as he shot his arrow in the midst of them'), being able to turn on the gas stove to make coffee is a moot amenity when there's no water to fill the pot. By the time i'd gotten it together to go out and buy some bottled water, the power had been restored.

The other day, i came home in the afternoon to have a job interview on skype and of course, even though it was Thursday, there wasn't any electricity. Total karmic no go zone. This time it was because Baku Electric had turned the switch off - that's what i get for trusting a new and now ex office manager with both my money and functionality. No warning notice - i guess they figure that people already know they haven't paid, so why bother to waste paper reminding them? Two days without water and electric, working 12-hour stints, is not really conducive to achieving my low stress objectives. My school was on the second day of phone lines being down, hence no internet access... i've omitted here my mid-winter crisis of going 10 days without water when the electrical workers refitting my building cut the line to my pump, but you get the general picture. The concept of having control over one's basic needs gets rather abstract; people have private cisterns and tanks, keep lots of batteries and candles on hand, but there are neither sympathetic comraderies nor complaints. This is just how life is, we are all at the mercy of inept, faceless forces and errant urban planning.

On the bright side, last month i found this notice stuck in the door, loosely translated for me as the president of the republic has decided to be gracious and relieve everyone from having to pay the water bill for a month. If an azeri speaker happens to read this post and is willing to give a more exact translation, have at it. i've always assumed there had to be some benefit(s) to living in a benevolent big D, and i guess this is one of them. An omnipotent leader can mimic the IMF and just make all our debts go away. Wow! When has a US prez ever done that for the working man? Not in my lifetime. It's comforting to know that at least one person is in control of the utility situation, with no Enron equivalents to muck things up. Maybe next month, we'll get free wifi? With all the moaning going on over royalty these days, i think people are missing the bigger picture. There's something to be said for having a national sugar daddy, someone with the means to just wash all our power struggles away.