Petite Frustrations

As much as I love Burkina, I miss some of the conveniences of the States. I thought I would give you an example of a recent issue. Before we left the US we bought a new dryer to pack in our container. Everyone said it wouldn’t be a problem to use here since all dryers are 220 volt. Well, that wasn’t the case for us.

When our container arrived, some of the guys from the Bible Institute helped us unload. One young man was an electrician. However, I think this was out of his league. When we tried to hook it up, we fried the motor and some sort of converter in the dryer. I hired a professional and asked if it could be fixed, if he could find parts, and if he needed me to order something from the States. He said it wouldn’t be a problem to fix it. However, electric dryers are not a common appliance in these parts. He worked on the dryer for one month…yes, I said one month. After several phone calls, he finally had it finished. The good new is that the dryer is working. The bad news is that none of the original switches work. They couldn’t figure out how to hook them up so they decided to install their own timer (looks like and egg timer). I also have three cords coming out of the back. One is for the motor that turns the drum (110 volt), one is for the heating coils (220 volt), and I’m not sure what the last one does.

I know that in time, I’ll look back on this and laugh. However, you better give me a couple of weeks before you mention it.