Have you ever seen one of those Dutch Old Master paintings. They are often dark and might perhaps depict a lady sewing by the light of a candle? You may think, poor her – how can she possibly see anything by the light of that one candle? How times have changed. But here, in 2013,so life is in Nairobi! It’s raining, ergo no power. In our household, we actually get by quite well with only one or two candles. Our eyes get accustomed to darkness quickly and are happy to feel our way around the house; the kids don’t seem to get freaked out. We could probably be better organised with solar lights and torches – but I don’t like planning for power cuts. We would all much rather that they didn’t happen.
Last weekend, we had no power for 4 days (a 10 year record for us). The good news was that fortunately, for 3 of those days – we weren’t home (otherwise I would have been going demented). A very dear friend popped over each day to run our tiny generator for a few hours to keep the fridge going. I still had to throw out my frozen shellfish mix that I was hoping to make into a seafood chowder one day. It just wasn’t worth the risk!
Last Friday, we packed the car (x5 bikes and 3 mattresses plus food and water) and set off merrily for Naivasha, waving goodbye like Swiss Family Robinson. Little did we know that the mother of all storms was about to hit our suburb – it’s epicentre seems to have hit our road. Within hours, eleven trees in our neighbour’s plot fell (though this says something about the size of their garden). Major branches fell off trees in our garden causing great alarm. One very large branch managed to fall squarely on top of one of our washing line poles – stoving it clean into the ground so that only the top T-section was visible. I guess it must have been terrifying to have been here. Trees fell this way and that, rendering the whole street impassable. Imagine the ‘twister’ in the Wizard of Oz (or to be a little more up to date; Oz the Great and Powerful) – these are the kind of storms we have been having here!
The rain has been unbelievable, even by long rains standards here. So far, 30 people have died in Kenya due to flooding and landslides and thousands displaced from their homes.
Funny how used to power cuts one can get. We had a large generator that would keep us out of the dark, the fridge cool & one air conditioner running which was such a luxury. A couple of weeks ago, the power went out in our suburb in Norway - the first time in the 9 months we've lived here - and I felt so ill prepared. I'm not accustomed to that anymore!
ReplyDeleteI lived in Moscow for 5 years and never had a power cut except during maintenance.It is an attitude problem and poor engineering to have power outages.
ReplyDeleteAlisha
People forget that Kenya still runs on 1970s infrastructure for most of its electric grid. And to be fair these problems are not unique to Africa (most of the US still relies on an equally old grid)... however in Africa there is very little redundancy in the system so if some small transformer station fries its wires then it means a day or 2 of blackout.
ReplyDeletePeople also forget that (as Obama put it)the average middle aged African is only a generation removed from an iron age, non-scientific culture, so it is sometimes an unfair expectation to give some guy an education and a suit and expect him to run systems that were essentially designed for post-industrial societies. It will take another generation or 2 at least.In the mean time some progress is definitely being made.
As I a "middle aged, African", I think the statement "he average middle aged African is only a generation removed from an iron age, non-scientific culture", is just bollocks. As a middle aged African, with a science background I know what systems are, and how they are managed. There is expertise around, it is just not listened to , or is frustrated out. Some of the post-industrial societies right now are dependent on us to keep there systems going. What we have is a political system that has not caught up with
ReplyDeleteSorry for repeat, but the statement "People also forget that (as Obama put it)the average middle aged African is only a generation removed from an iron age, non-scientific culture" just really got to me. Interesting comment, when was this that Obama stated this? So an understanding of systems, science, is dependent on enviroment and not intellect? Also seems someone cannot be trained? Must be a waste of time to offer scientific training to someone "out of the stone age". Maybe a separate school system for "those" people?
ReplyDeleteThere are engineers trained and capable of creating redundant systems, we know how. It is the political will is not there. Also, there are several in the political system who know if they go with the "we are Africans, and cannot manage this" then we get more funding. The electric grid is the biggest way to "eat".
Let's start with the 10 million dollar account held in the Jersey Islands (http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Inside-Gichurus-Sh20bn-empire-/-/1056/1171160/-/15im05ez/-/index.html). It is the tip of the iceberg.
For a more in-depth look at what is going on look at
http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/0452287081.
If one does not want to read, there is always the movie the Constant Gardener.
Frustrated technocrat