30th April 2010
Back in Kathmandhu again we drove out to the airport today on our little red scooter in the searing heat, arriving with a fresh coating of brown dust head to toe.. "Very fetching" says Dita looking at my once white shirt. The clever little bugger is wearing brown...
We need to collect the light bulbs that we'll be using to light the school - 50 of them in all. They've been sent straight from Holland - the most advanced LED lamps in the world - using just 6 Watts of power to create the equivalent of a 60 Watt light. Each looks just like an ordinary bulb - and no fancy LED fittings are needed to use them. But these are no ordinary lamps.
When you're working with solar, power consumption is key - and these babies use less than half the power of the "low energy" bulbs we're all used to. What we didn't know when we started out was that "low energy" lights are seriousy toxic when you chuck them away - they're full of mercury. They can last for about 5 years - but in remote rural Nepal no rubbish men take them away when they're spent.. We'd be poisoning the soil for a generation if we used them.
Unlike "low energy" lamps, LEDs last twice as long - around TEN years - about a hundred times longer than a normal light bulb. They use half the power of "low energy" lamps, they're MUCH MUCH harder to break (no tiny fragile gas filled tubes) and they're completely non toxic. A no brainer we thought - until we discovered what they cost... New technology comes at a price - and these bad boys were almost 40 dollars EACH when we discovered them nine months ago!
"Honey, shall we spend 2000 bucks on light bulbs?" NO chance of being able to afford that. A quick Google and a few emails later and some remarkable guys at Lemis Lighting earned hero status here at LP. Lemnis make Pharox LED lamps - regarded as the best in the world - and they offered to donate us the whole lot!
Well we can't thank you enough guys. You rock. True to their word Lemnis sent them over direct from Holland by DHL. So far so good. All we had to do is pick them up!
Hmmm... Nothing is QUITE that easy here... Our first trip to airport cargo had already been aborted as we got caught in the biggest deluge I'd ever seen - and I've seen some BIG storms. This one made my visions of the Nepali Monsoon seem like a light shower. With cars and bikes dry as a bone one second and aquaplaning on a newly formed river the next, we figured puling over was the best option. 2 hours later and it was still bucketing down.
So here we were trying again. Arriving nicely browned in the afternoon heat we went through the ritual paper chase sent from one counter the to other, documents stamped and copied, stapled and stamped again, copied and stapled, stamped and noted, one desk to the next until - finally - we arrived a the gates to a massive cargo hall. "Please wait here", we were kindly told.. We'll just find your package.." Well that wasn't so hard was it?
One hour down - "just a little longer - we are looking.."
Two hours down - "We are still looking. We have called head office - they are sending a team!"
Three hours down - "Mr Justin - I am sorry. We cannot find your parcel - can you tell us what is is?"
Four hours down - "We have found it!" Massive relief - followed quickly by total guttedness as we realise this 6 inch by 6 inch box can't possibly contain our 50 bulbs. This is not our box after all.
Five hours down - it's already half an hour after closing time. It's time to give up... "Please come back tomorrow?", we are kindly asked. Everyone is incredibly lovely to us - and they're trying their damndest to find our goods - but the cargo hall is not computerised, nor stacked seqentially. Superman would take 5 days to find our box in here with just a 12 digit number to go on..
9th May..
And all that was the night before a general strike paralysed the country for the next 8 days. I wonder where our light bulbs are now. We're off to the airport now to find out. Wish us luck - we're going to need it!
J&D