If you were having coffee with, we would be having coffee by candlelight, two candles lighting up the room, there would be no soft music playing in the background or rose petals scattered on the floor; this is not a romantic coffee date, its because there’s a power cut…
For the past couple of months there has been an increase in electricity black outs in frequency and duration, in the beginning the power utility company tried to down play the severity and scale of the problem making it seem like it was mostly “routine maintenance” and faults causing the power outages. A week ago they even took to issuing a statement on people spreading “fake news” on social media about the state of load-shedding, since they had not communicated anything on the official channels
Well its now official, we are in stage one of the electricity loading shedding phase, this is when there are timed electricity blackouts in various regions, neighbourhoods and provinces of the country of anything from about five hours to ten hours of electricity darkness everyday depending with the area..
Why is the power company load-shedding? The water level at Kariba Dam Hydroelectric power station are at such critical levels that the River Authority has started rationing the available water and consequently power generation has fallen and cannot sustain the national grid load, so they shed some of the load.
How do they plan on solving this crisis? I read something about a plan on importing more electricity from neighbouring countries such as Mozambique,… but knowing our country’s crazy financial (mis)management I am not holding my breath maybe I would pay more attention if they called for a national vigil to pray for rain or hold a rain making ceremony, appease ancestors, even a rain dance, I would go and dance.
If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you, sometimes I like to fancy myself as a Rain God, it seems to rain around me could be something about my hair, it rains after wash day.
Did you ever hear about the Zambezi River God, the Nyami Nyami, its rumored he too can(could) make it rain or not rain, and the latter seems probable in light of if you reflect on how we got hit by a category four cyclone a few months back yet not a drop reached the dam, some things can not be explained away logically and scientifically, there’s magic and mysteries deep within our history.
If you were having coffee with me, I would ask you if you would like a plate of pasta with your coffee, coffee and pasta because yeah forget about bread I only buy that on special occasions because its crazy priced. A loaf of bread costs more than a litre of fuel and looks like the fuel price will go up soon due to its unavailibilty and so will the LP cooking gas especially with the power cuts then everything else will go up too, its inevitable.
If you were having coffee with me, I would hope you do not mind I blew out the candle to save it for next evening’s darkness and as I type this post squinting at the keys in the dark, yes I am ashamed to admit I do not know the computer keyboard as well as I should, for I need to see the letters on the keys to type; I am from angling down my laptop screen on its lowest minimum brightness setting(to save battery) so a bit of light can shine on the keyboard keys. I had never put much thought into a it, but yep a laptop with a keyboard backlight would not only be super cool, but super handy.
This is only stage 1 of the load-shedding programme there’s also stage two which will probably have longer hours of darkness and who knows what they will do in stage three, stage four , by stage five probably switch off the light at the end of the tunnel; welcome to the dark ages.
Considering once upon a time this proposal was tabled that since they could not afford money to commission a new power station, they would instead impose a ban or regulate standards on high power drain appliances, from electricity geysers to fridges, aircons, electric cookers/ovens, dishwashers
“If we make a saving of 200MW, through the use of energy-efficient appliances, it’s actually cheaper than putting up a 200MW power station; and we don’t have the money.”
Wait what? Yup
Whats happening in your neck of the woods and do yo know how I can build a power plant in my backyard or better yet whats Elon Musk’s number, if you see him tell him I might have a proposal and I don’t mean of the marrying kind.
~B
Becoming The Muse 
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