Electricity Strike in the North

I walked into the teachers’ room at school today and noticed that the lights weren’t on. It wasn’t too dark (lots of windows, plenty of sunshine), so I figured perhaps someone decided to save some money.

Then I sat down next to Evren. “The electricity is out,” she said. Wait, what? She continued, “They’re on strike. They don’t like what the government is doing so there’s no electricity.”

The government wants to privatize the electricity, and so in protest, the workers have gone on strike. It started at 3:30pm yesterday, and is supposed to continue indefinitely. The leaders have said that they’ll bring the police to force them to turn the electricity back on, but I don’t know how/when/if that will happen.

This is coming during an abnormal cold spell for the country and during first semester finals in the North. One teacher told me that her children had to study with a lantern last night, while another teacher said that students were posting on Facebook about not being able to study enough because of the lack of light. (Of course students are posting on Facebook with whatever remaining  battery power they have on their phones or computers.) Before biking home today I chatted with some of my students. I asked about their exams, but then also about the electricity. They didn’t understand that word, but when I said lights they knew what I meant. All four of them (who live in three different towns outside of Nicosia) were without power at home.

At school, the teachers held a group discussion about supporting or not supporting the strike. The problem with supporting the strike is that it would throw off the exam and reports schedule. We’re at the end of the semester, and there are a certain number of days for the exams. Already they’re using one of the days for the make-up exams because Tuesday was a holiday for Denktash’s funeral. Then the verifying and reporting of grades takes a long time due to certain protocol (grades must be entered by all teachers on one of four official, school computers).  (The school reports are far more complicated than I expected and something I’ll try to decipher because it doesn’t make sense to me as I currently understand it–three people evaluating a single exam just in case the parents complain about the grade? Surely that can’t be right…)

I’m not entirely sure what the conclusion was, but I think the teachers are going to continue as normal for the remainder of the semester (which ends 31 January), but in the second semester, which starts 16 February, they’ll consider taking supportive action.

As for me, I have power and have invited my coworkers to visit/stay with me if they want. I don’t think they’ll take me up on the offer, but I do hope a resolution is reached soon.