Category: Other Page 143 of 181

1. The things in my fridge will last 12 hours with no power before I have to worry. My freezer–24 hours. (Except for ice cream–that only lasts about an hour when the power goes off).

2. Mayonnaise does not have to be refrigerated. It can be left out–at least for a while. I can hear the screams of protest now. It’s true. I too used to believe that you couldn’t eat a chicken salad sandwich or potato salad that had been left out too long….but in those cases, the mayo is actually a preservative…it’s the chicken or other ingredients that will spoil! Don’t believe me? Google it, you doubters.

3. Creativity abounds. When no power, sit in the car and run your laptop off of the car battery. Watch a movie with your husband in there. You even get air conditioning.

4. Even animals need light. Our poor Jack Russell sprained her foot coming up the stairs when the power was out. Poor thing; she is still limping.

5. More creativity. When it goes out during youth group and you’ve got 40 students in your house and no lights and they are kind of stinky from playing basketball and it’s 90 degrees outside and 200 degrees inside…..just hand out a bunch of glow sticks and divide them into groups and tell them you’ll give prizes for whoever comes up with the best dance. Oh yeah.

6. Never put a candle on top of an appliance with a plastic lid. Because you’ll set it on fire. But I wouldn’t know anything about that. Ahem.

7. All the phone numbers for the power company are programmed into my cell phone. The routine: “I’m calling from the Mbezi/Kunduchi area. How long will it be off? Are they working on it? What is the schedule for this week?”

8. Your cell phone makes a really great temporary flashlight.

9. Never underestimate the value of head lamps.

10. I APPRECIATE Electricity!!!!

Dar es Salaam sometimes reminds me of an adolescent boy. You know, when he starts growing so fast that he doesn’t know what to do with all his arms and legs, and his mind hasn’t caught up to his body yet?

Well, that’s our city. I can’t believe how much construction is going on. How many cars are being imported. How rent prices are skyrocketing. But private business is growing so fast that government infrastructure can’t keep up. I used to think that traffic was atrocious. Well, now it’s, umm…really atrocious. I used to be able to leave the house any time after 8:15 am to avoid hitting traffic if I wanted to go to town (about 10 miles away). Now I have to wait until 9:00 am, and yet there still seems to be sections where there is always traffic, no matter what time of day it is. I’m not talking about freeway commute traffic–because there are no freeways. When I had to be at the embassy at 8:00 am for Josiah’s interview 3 weeks ago, we left at 6:30 in the morning. To go 10 miles.

But what is worse these days is the electricity. Tanzania hasn’t gotten enough rain, and since most of the power is hydro-electric, that’s bad news. Couple that with a lot of mismanagement and corruption and “suddenly” the country doesn’t have enough power. This happened in 2006, when the power rationing got so bad that the entire city was without electricity from 7 am to 7 pm, every day. Two weeks ago, it started again. First it was twice a week for our area–Wednesdays from 6 pm to 11 pm and Sundays from 9 am to 6 pm.

Then, Friday afternoon, it went off exactly at 4 pm and came on at 11 pm. Uh oh. Bad news. When it goes on and off so exactly like that, we know it’s a cut and not just a little problem some where.

Thankfully, we didn’t have Youth Group this Friday since it was HOPAC’s break. But…uh, what exactly are we going to do with 40 teenagers on Friday nights with no electricity?

So, we hem and hah and sigh and try hard not to complain. Do everything without complaining or arguing. And we decided that we need to bite the bullet and buy a generator. Except that unfortunately, everyone else in the city has the same idea, so they are a little hard to come by right now. Oops.

When I get over being extremely irritated, I really end up just being sad for Tanzania. Obviously losing power for hours every other day (which could soon become every day) isn’t exactly good for the economy. This is an amazing country with incredible potential. It just can’t seem to get up on its feet.