Running out of electricty

My wall unit. If you notice in the top right of the little screen, there is a tiny face.  When I have electricity it  smiles, but when I get too low, it gets unhappy (like this morning). 

This morning I woke up to beep, beep, beep.  At first I thought it was my upstairs neighbors alarm clock going off.  So I calmly got ready.  Then I stepped out to the kitchen and realized the beeping was in fact coming from my electric box on the wall (picture above...) So I figured today would be a good day to write about my lovely electricity experience down here.

We have a pay-as-you-go system, which means you put a certain amount on your account at one time.  In order to put money on my account, I have to go to either the IGA or to the Housing Department on campus.  The worst part of it is that the IGA sometimes runs out of electricity.  Yup, that's right....the store runs out of electricity!  From what I gathered, the various electricity brokers (such as the IGA) are given a specific allowance of electricity per week that they can give out (Think of it as ration cards from wartime). This can pose a major, major problem. It can result in blank stares and a "come back on Monday" when you go on the weekend to buy electricity. I had this happen to me once and I will never make that mistake again!!  (One of my classmates kept going back to IGA and they didn't have electricity for 4 days in a row. )

So here are the steps to get electricity...
1. go to IGA/Housing
2. wait in line (can take up to 30 minutes at IGA depending on what time of day you go)
3.  ask the cashier to add money to your electric account (sometimes they will tell you that you waited in the "wrong" line because that register can't do electricity...I know this is a lie because I have bought electricity at each and every register.  I sometimes think they are just lazy/don't want to go through all the steps to give me my electricity lol)

The numbers I have to enter into the machine. I have been asking them to write out for me because  too many times, I couldn't read the printed numbers

4.  get the the 20 digit code that then needs to be entered in the wall unit back in the apartment
5. enter the code (hope you do it right the first time so you don't have to re-enter all the numbers.  Sometime you have to kind of guess the numbers on the printed receipt because the ink isn't so great)
6. Voila! You have electricity and your little guy on the monitor is back to his normal smiley face!

Positive of this electric system:
I. I am much more aware of how much electricity I use.  It has made me turn lights off, not leave extraneous things running, etc.
II.  You budget your electricity and then work within your budget.
III.  I have a smiley face on my wall :)

Negatives of this system:
I. I CAN RUN OUT OF ELECTRICITY! MAJOR PROBLEM!!  (People, there is no room for error here)
II.  Electricity in Dominica is really really expensive.  I spent around 100 USD on electric last month and that was me rationing it a lot more than I would have in the states.
III.  It takes quite a bit of my precious time to "top off" my account.

Well hopefully everyone now understands what I mean when I say  "I run out of electricity".  Just part of the lovely Dominica experience.