When the Storm Doesn’t End with the Rain

Yesterday’s thunderstorm over Kigali was one of those classic rainy-season previews: heavy rain, booming thunder, and the kind of lightning that makes you pause whatever you’re doing and just listen. At some point during the storm, the power went out at our house. At first, I assumed it was just another neighborhood-wide outage. That’s nothing new here.

But as time passed, it became clear something else was going on.

It turned out we were the only house without electricity.

When I checked the breaker, the main switch had flipped off. Easy fix. I turned it back on… and it immediately tripped again. No matter how many times I tried, it refused to stay on. With no obvious cause and no way to safely troubleshoot it myself, we ended up spending the entire night and most of today without power.

My biggest worry wasn’t the darkness or inconvenience. It was the refrigerator and freezer. I had just bought a good amount of meat and stocked the freezer, only to lose power for over 12 hours. Every time I opened the fridge, I could feel the cold slipping away and my stress levels climbing.

I contacted the landlord, and eventually an electrician was sent over. After checking things out, he found the culprit: the garage. Water had leaked into the electrical circuitry there, causing the breaker to trip repeatedly. In hindsight, this likely explains why our Christmas lights mysteriously fried back in December, another heavy rain, another unseen leak.

The immediate solution was simple but not ideal. The electrician turned off the breaker specifically for the garage lights. As long as that breaker stays off, the rest of the house has power and is stable for now. The bigger question is where exactly the water is leaking from, and how extensive the repair will be remains unanswered.

And of course, I had to pay 10,000 RWF for the electrician’s services.

What happens next is anyone’s guess. Will the landlord take responsibility for fixing the underlying issue? Or will this turn into another long back-and-forth over repairs? Right now, I honestly don’t know, and that uncertainty is exhausting in itself.

Just when things seemed settled, another problem popped up. Once the electricity was restored, our internet router decided it was done cooperating. The network and password stopped working entirely, likely reset during the long outage. That meant another round of troubleshooting, this time with the ISP. After contacting them and having the router and password reset, the internet finally came back online.

You’d think that would be the end of it.

But this evening, the entire neighborhood experienced at least four separate power outages. On. Off. On. Off. Each time, there is a familiar flicker of lights and a moment of tension.

And this is only the beginning of the rainy season.

If this is what things look like now, I can’t help but worry about how much worse the outages may become in the coming weeks and months. Power instability isn’t just an inconvenience; it affects food, work, communication, and peace of mind.

It’s been a stressful, rough couple of days. The kind that leaves you mentally drained even after everything is technically “fixed.” For now, we’re grateful to have electricity and internet again, even if it’s a fragile truce with the weather.

Here’s hoping the rains ease up… or at least that the wiring holds.