Electric Mayhem

I am a fan of the Muppets, but this is not about Dr. Teeth and his band.

Power outages are of no surprise in Kyrgyzstan, but when the power is only working in half of your apartment, you know you have a problem that needs to be checked out soon. Especially when it’s the half that works the hot water tank and the washing machine! So I called on my co-workers who have experience in remodeling and home repairs. Also in Kyrgyzstan, things don’t get attention right away, but eventually the guys came over to seek out the problem. Mukash checked the fuses and then removed a cover in the wall and what was behind that shocked us all! It was a bundled mess of burnt wires! Even those not electrical savvy could see that this conglomerate of grilled chaos was very unprofessionally done and very unsafe. The wires weren’t capped or taped or anything! Not being able to fix the problem at the moment as the bazaar was closed, he pulled the wires out of the wall and separated them and got the electricity working again. 

My roommate and I enjoyed having the electricity back for the evening and I was looking forward to having a bath in the morning with plenty of hot water, rather than just what I could prepare in our pots and tea kettle…not to mention a warm bathroom, as the heat for that room had also not been working. It’s not so preferable to wash your hair in a room where you can see your breath because it’s that cold. So I went to bed. Only to be woken up by a loud ‘POP’. I knew it was the electricity so I ran and opened my door and looked at the spot where the wires were…they seemed to be ok. Then I heard water running and thought maybe my roommate was taking a shower and the lights went out and just as I was going to knock on the bathroom door, she came out of her room. So I opened the door to see where the water was coming from and the room was filled with white smoke and smelled of burnt electricity! Though there was no water running there. So we went into the kitchen and there we saw our hot water tank spewing out water! Not exactly what you want to wake up to. Thankfully who ever installed the hot water tank, placed it over the kitchen sink so all the water was going into the sink instead of on the floor!  I got under the sink and shut off the water, then opened the door to the balcony to air out the smoke from the bathroom and the burnt electrical smell as much as possible.

When it got too cold and seemed to be aired out enough, we closed the door. Then we just stood there, staring at the loose wires looking to see if anything more was going to occur; not wanting to turn our backs to it! Finally we decided it was safe enough to retreat into our rooms, though not whole heartedly believing that to be true. I shut off the fuses, so that no electricity would be running. Which when it’s winter and your heaters are electrical- you know you’re going to have a cold night. But I figured a cold apartment was better than one engulfed in flames! Which I did prepare for, before going to bed, got my necessities ready to take if I had to run out because of a fire.

Neither of us slept too well that night. Thankfully, no fire occurred, no one was electrocuted, and the problem has been repaired properly.