Just as we had dinner this evening, the power went out ... load shedding!
So we lit the candles, and switched on the emergency light in the kitchen. Before long the laptop batteries ran out, and a while later the cellphone batteries. So there we were, just like when I was a kid, on the farm, no power, no lights and only ourselves to keep us busy.
The kids got bored quickly, there were no tech to keep them busy. I was fine, because no phone and no internet meant that I could not respond to support calls. (blessing in disguise). It is fine, but this was the second night in a row, last night we had an impromptu braai, with friends of my wife and the kids had friends to keep them busy.
So what brought us to this?
When I was a kid, in the rural areas, any flicker of lightning would cause a black-out. But it was not an issue then. We were prepared for it. And we were not so utterly dependent on technology to keep ourselves busy.
Our electricity provider, in the last couple of years, seemed to have lost the plot. General maintenance were neglected, substandard coal silos were accepted at power stations, money were wasted on bonuses instead of bringing new power stations online or refurbishing older ones. Proper planning were not done, or not implemented to cater for the energy requirement we have today.
The bottom line, poor / lack of proper management of the energy provider. There are a whole lot of adjectives and verbs I can add to this statement, but I will rather not. But words like self enrichment, short-sightedness comes to mind.
But there is no quick fix for 20 years of neglect, other than the so-called load-shedding and raising of electricity prices. So for now we can look forward to candle-light dinners between 18:00 and 20:30 every evening, and an annual escalation in electricity prices!
Maybe it is time to invest in a small power generator.
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