Power Trips

Imagine a day where you get up, eat breakfast, go to work, walk in the door at 8 AM, sit down and set up your lap top to get ready to work.

8:15 the power goes out.

This was yesterday.

This is a common occurrence in Maun. Usually, I wait an hour to see if the power will come back on and catch up on reading studies or cleaning the office. If it doesn't come back, change of game plan.

Very little can be done without electricity. I can't turn on a computer, a printer, the internet, the network server, the fax machine, or even a light. Luckily, my lap top holds a few hours charge, but other then that, no access to work.

What's worse, is when the electricity goes out village wide, the water pumps stop working and the village then goes on a water shortage. No running water absolutely everywhere, no flushing toilets, no washing hands, no boiling water to make pasta.

Anyways. Like I said, this is a fairly common occurrence in Maun. Power outtages happen a least once a month.

What was funny is within a half an hour, I heard that it had been confirmed, power would not be back until 4PM. Some how, every one in town knew this. Power was out from 8-4. Done. Everyone at work calls it a day, nothing can be done. On days like this, I usually go home by 12, to read studies on orphans by sunlight through the window or practice some guitar.

Last month, power went out for 4 days. The first day, no one knew when it would come back. The second day, rumors floated around that a transformer had blew somewhere between Dukwe and Francistown and that power could be out for up to 5 days. It was a district wide blackout. They had to fly technicians in from Joburg to fix the thing. That's when we found out who were the workaholics. The only lodge that had a strong enough generator to power internet was Maun Lodge. As the first person there on Thursday morning, I watched people trickle in with their laptops, finishing presentations and studies and etc. Hilarious.

The third day power was out, not as hilarious. It was time to make sure we could eat the perishable food in the fridge. I was waiting to see if the power would run out at ATMs. If people could not take money out of the bank on a Friday, I thought there were going to be riots. Luckily this didn't happen. And luckily, I found out I could get cash back when I bought more candles at Spar, so I could go to the shops without backup generators to power their credit card machines. I wandered around town and stopped to say hi to my friend Wame who works at the Orange store. I thought the store would be really slow, but instead, people kept coming in. It turned out they were all buying Orange SIM cards for their phones, because Mascom cell network had been out for days because the cell towers had no power. People started topping up the petrol in their cars, afraid that generators at the fuel stations would run out so they wouldn't be able to pump any petrol.

Day four, the power came back.

Yay for being able to have the finer things in life: an ice cold beer.