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For those of you who dont know what load sharing is… it is essentially a power cut for several hours everyday and starts in the winter time when the water tables get low.
It can happen at any point in the day (though usually in the morning and evening when you most need it). This is definitely something I could not have appreciated back in London. The thought of sitting in the dark for hours in the evening without some sort of distraction is almost impossible with ipods, laptops and generators. It is also incredibly annoying – when I first arrived in Nepal load sharing hadn’t yet started, but it has since gone from 2 hours up to 4 and now overlaps with my working hours – thank goodness for laptops and their back-up batteries! But it has given me a new appreciation for just how much of my lifestyle depended on electricity. I think you should all try it. Sit at home one evening and see how long you last before trying to switch on something that needs electricity, only for you it will still work! Water saving is also an incredibly important aspect out here and I can honestly say that I will be taking home with me many of the energy saving lessons I have learned. It makes me feel incredibly guilty of just how much energy I have been wasting, when many people don’t have it when they need it, let alone have the ‘luxury’ of wasting it.
Oh and if you think the royal mail strikes and occasional tube strikes are annoying, try having a couple of Maoists strikes a week! They have been particularly active recently and they tend to enforce road blocks, stopping ALL traffic on the roads. On one hand its quite peaceful without the noise and crazy traffic, yet some of my colleagues had to walk for two hours just to get into the office.
Sam Lee is a Project Assistant on Nepal’s National Biodiversity Databank and Red List of Mammals. She will be blogging regularly on the process, providing insights into the details of producing a National Red List
National Red Lists - IUCN | Zoological Society of London