Grounded!

Last night was hot, so I got out of bed and plugged in an extra fan I had bought used from friends. It was an American fan, so it needed a plug adaptor to fit into the European-style recepticals here. It roared on. I couldn't find a switch to change the speed. A few seconds later there was a pop, the fan stopped abruptly, and my bedroom instantly filled with the aroma of burning oil and rubber.

Alas, I had momentarily forgotten that a plug adaptor is not the only thing you need to run an American electrical appliance here. You also need a power transformer to dial down the 220 volts that is the European standard, to 110, the American standard.

Despite opening my windows and turning on two other fans, the room continued to smell so bad I had to sleep in the living room.

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I am less than educated about electrical principles. The only electrical tutorial I've been able to handle is the highly entertaining and nearly farcical There Are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings, by Kenn Amdahl. It's one step below Electricity for Dummies (if there is such a book).

Amdahl admits that no-one understands electricity, though a lot of people understand a lot about how it behaves. He finally undestood the principles after a dream he had one night, in which a large green man appeared to him and explained the true nature of electricity: there are no electrons, there are only Greenies, like him, trying to get to the next groovy party on the electrical line. The book is a hoot, and it effectively explains electrical concepts sans electrical jargon, introducing scientific terminology ("this is what other people call an 'amp'," "some people call this 'resistance'.") only after he's made the concept abundantly clear using Greenie-talk.

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I am not alone in my lack of electrical prowess. Senegalese electricians are also missing--or ignoring--some basic electrical concepts. Such as what that third prong in electrical plugs is for. Though appliance cords and extension cords here all have three prongs, and the sockets, of course, have a hole for the third prong to fit into, it turns out those holes aren't wired to anything. This means the outlets aren't grounded.

Until I moved here, electrical grounding was a vague mental construct. Why electricity can't simply go down one wire, into an appliance to do its work, and straight out the other wire is a mystery to me. People do it! We walk into our office buildings, do our work, and walk out.

Well, grounding is no longer theoretical for me. It is a visceral, physical experience, because whenever I touch (for example) an input jack on my laptop while my bare or socked feet are touching the floor, I get shocked. One can also get shocked by touching a refridgerator. My favorite: the friend who got shocked when he touched a cement wall in his house.

A less amusing example occurred at my old apartment building, a few blocks from campus. A colleague was on the roof using the washing machine. (Don't ask me why the washing machine is on the roof--I don't know. But it's there, inside a thief-proof cage of heavy iron bars.) My friend was nearly electrocuted when she touched the washing machine while standing in a small puddle of water from the previous day's rain. How she survived, I'll never know. . . 220 volts delivers quite a jolt!

So, the next time you insert a three-pronged plug into a three-hole socket, be thankful that that third hole is connected to something called a ground, which takes some of those shocking green Greenies back outside where they belong!