Power is never expected to
be stable… Especially when living in the heart of Africa. Once you are blessed with this amenity that
assists from lighting our rooms to keeping our drinks cold and vegetables fresh
in the fridge, it is difficult to adjust but you learn quickly. You discover that a pot covering your cheese
on a cold cement floor along with candles melted to every possible countertop
helps in filling the gap when electricity is missing.
Umeme, Uganda’s power company,
has been a hoot and a holler during my service thus far. As expected, power goes out all the
time.
Daily.
Often it occurs multiple
times as hour.
Sometimes it goes out for
days.
But why? I decided to inquire with some of the people
that I work with.
“Tara, it is simple. Every time power goes out it is because a
pole falls over.”
“Okay. Can you explain then how the power goes out
and then ten seconds later it returns?”
“It is because Umeme was
there and able to immediately fix it.”
“Okay. You don’t think that Umeme ever shuts off
power on purpose?”
“Oh no Tara. They would not do that. This is not America.”
I beg to differ.
It seems that the power in
Kitgum goes off as soon as everyone is finished paying his or her bills. Ironic?
Now I tried thinking of
some logical reasons for the lack of power and wanted to share these ideas to
my coworkers. Logical reasoning #1? A rolling blackout. I thought I would have gotten some of them to
switch their thinking…
Nope.
They still believe it is
the falling poles.
I can’t say for sure what
causes the lack of power in Uganda and specifically the many shortages that
take place up North.
I can say for now is thank
gosh Meeting Point has a generator that runs for some few hours a day where I
can charge everything before returning home to the cave.
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