sparks fly

We are always trying to get a better electricity supply to the farm. I did some research and thought that by swapping the supply cables to our house from one set of overhead cables to another, we may gain a better supply because we would not then be connected to the same phase as our neighbours.

We contacted José, the electrician who re-wired our house, and after a few days he dropped in to assess the problem. After giving it due consideration, he said that he didn’t think that it would make any difference as we would still be sharing the common neutral cable with our neighbours. However, as he was there, we suggested that he might want to quote to run a new supply cable from the nearest transformer directly to the house. He thought about that and concluded that a new transformer, connected to the high tension line that runs across the bottom of our land would be the best solution.

Now we had been told by several other electricians that this high tension line was privately owned by Telefonica, the national telephone company, and that they would “probably” not grant access to it. José immediately said that all high tension lines belong to Endesa, the supply company, and that he would let us have a quote for the work “in a couple of days”. After many days, the quote was not forthcoming so we visited his family shop in Ruté to chase it up.

It is an odd thing that on some days, I can converse with local people without trouble, understand what they say and reply to them in basic, if fractured, Spanish. However, this particular day was one where any Spanish person could have been speaking Swahili and the language part of my brain was just not connected to my lips. I struggled to make myself understood and when José’s brother and father finally decided to call José to the shop to see if he could have any better luck, all I could hear from him was accent in a Ruté dialect.

In desperation, we visited a Spanish friend who teaches English and after a short phone call to José, it was revealed that he had arranged for a surveyor from Endesa to visit our house with him, so that the surveyor could prepare a report and give the go ahead for the work. We now await the visit and are confining ourselves to barracks until they have been……

Time passed and José and the surveyor turned up one afternoon as the sun was setting and after due consideration the surveyor said that the high tension line was owned by Telefonica. A new solution was quickly cobbled together to connect to the nearer but under utilised transformer across the valley. Jose left with the surveyor and we awaited developments.

Time passed and we got a licence from the surveyor to have the work carried out with a 3 month time limit for completion. Back to José but this time he "went dark" for weeks and time eventually ran out on the licence.

A year passed by and a chance visit to the shop brought forth the question from José's brother "Did you ever get your electricity supply upgraded at your house?"

My "No" was answered with the sage observation "my brother is mad"...