Battery power again!

(Written Saturday April 28, 22:08 Kenya time)

Well this is unfortunate… since completing my last entry and wiping out both laptop batteries, I haven't been able to charge up again. My solar charger outputs only 75W; this MacBook Pro uses an 85W charger. The company that sold it to me insisted that it would still work but would just take longer to charge. This may be true, but the inverter screams a high pitched tone when it's being overdrawn, and so I can't plug this into it. In fact, the damn thing is screaming its song when I plug even half that wattage into it. I'm gonna make me some phone calls when I return stateside. It has at least been able to charge my camera batteries.

I had expected that I might want to use the solar system that's here already, but unfortunately it seems I've been thwarted at every turn. The first day no one put the main battery on solar charger. Then the smaller batteries got used up for watching TV. Yesterday I got the large battery fully charged, only to find out the power inverted had a blown fuse. And of course, no spares to be found. Someone was coming to the village today from town so we called in a request for the fuses, but when he arrived this morning he hadn't had time to get them. Finally tonight I jerry rigged two batteries together to get enough power and after 5 hours of charging, got one battery up to 100%. I gotta make good use of this! Although tomorrow (Sunday) I'm heading back to Nakuru for the night as Carol has business Monday morning and it'll give me a chance to get online and post all of this.

So now, to catch up on the last few days. (FYI I have backdated the posts written since this point so they are all in chronological order)