April/May 2008

Okay, Let There Be Light!

Kamini Village during one of Hydra's nightime blackouts

Ironic, really, that last month we suggested there be light … sometimes. In March, the DEH really took us at our word: no light ... sometimes.

By the time the third consecutive week of nightly blackouts came around, even the stoic Kaminites were beginning to grumble. The ongoing rolling and random electricity cuts—often twice a day for hours on end —were affecting everyone’s mood. Nobody knew when the next would occur, making it hard to plan any sort of schedule, work or domestic.

Granted, about ten days into the crisis, Kontelania taverna had a installed a generator, a beacon of light in a pitch black valley, but the novelty of sitting by candle light in the gloom had worn patience thin.

It must be said that whilst mountains of skoopethia (rubbish) mounted on Athenian pavements, our local garbage collection went about its work as usual, so we were spared some of the inconvenience much of the rest of the country suffered.

If nothing else, it showed how absolutely dependant upon electricity we have become. Back in the 1980s, its absence was excuse for a prolonged party, but then we didn’t have a variety of entertaining television programs, computers and the Internet, electrical heating/cooling, ATMs, cordless phones (which don’t work in blackouts unlike the old style roto-dial type) and such.