Over recent weeks however, this potential use of the AC has been a bit of a moot point. The multi year drought that has affected East Africa is finally impacting us here in Dar es Salaam. For sure, the impact is nothing compared to those poor souls elsewhere in the region who are now relying on Oxfam and the UN for food. What I saw in Lushoto earlier this year was bad enough- things can only have got worse since then. The relatively affluent communities of Dar es Salaam are nowhere close to starving and are unlikely ever to reach such a point. However, when you have such adverse conditions across the region, nobody escapes entirely.
For us lucky expatriates, the impact has been mainly to do with access to electricity. The vast majority of the country’s generation comes from hydroelectric facilities, located across the country. When the rains fail, the water levels drop. The poor short rains in late 2008 and the almost entirely dry rainy season this spring means that no prolonged rainfall has been experienced since mid 2008- the rivers are now low and the dams would appear to be more or less dry. As a result, severe power rationing is now in force. We have now got used to having power cuts between 6pm and 11pm most nights. Yesterday was even worse, with no power at all between 9am and 7pm, followed by a further cut in the middle of the night.
This situation brought to mind a Tanzanian newspaper cartoon drawn in response to a UN sponsored initiative to turn off the lights across the world for a single hour to mark World Environment Day:
Them: “We shall shut down power for one whole hour to demonstrate our commitment to the environment.”
Us: “That’s just child’s play. We have started rationing power, and we will be implementing the shortage across the whole country for a whole year!”
Anyway, it would seem that we’re all now reducing our carbon footprint here, whether we like it or not. We do have diesel generators but given the extent to which we’ll be relying on them over the next few months, it makes sense to minimize their usage. These contraptions are generally on their last legs, make a load of noise and cost a fortune to fill up.
One silver lining to all this has been the extent to which you become aware of how your household depends on power and the areas of it which suck up the most. I’d never realised, for example, that using the microwave and cooker could use such phenomenal amounts of power- sometimes creating so much load as to take the generator offline. Given that the current situation is bound to create a huge run on diesel, making it both a rare and expensive commodity, it doesn’t hurt to figure out how to minimize usage. We’ve managed to go from using a full tank on an evening to barely using a quarter.
Anyway, although it’s not fun, this situation is, thankfully, not really down to my company, meaning that I can generally keep my head held high around the Peninsula without risking it being knocked off by some angry expat wife. Although things may improve a bit, the born pessimist in me can see power cuts happening for some time to come. It’s a nuisance to be sure but I know there are a lot of people who have never enjoyed access to electricity in their lives who are being affected in far more profound and painful ways than any of us are- another time to thank our lucky stars I think.
So what else is going on here in Tanzania? Well apart from power rationing, which, after all is really only annoying the minority who ever had access to power in the first place, we are entering some interesting times, with the elections only a year away.
Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the death of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, the first President of Tanzania and a man remembered as fundamentally decent and honest. Many people, myself included, would view his policies as hugely misguided, but very few would ever question his motives. Between 1950 and 1990, the continent of Africa had over 150 different leaders in total. Of these, only 3 left power voluntarily. Nyerere was one of the three. We had a national holiday to mark the occasion and today the papers were naturally full of articles and commentaries covering the event.
Most of the commentaries were very nostalgic in tone, hearkening back to a selfless, decent leader and wondering whether the present generation of leaders has lived up those ideals. Although it is painfully obvious that the welcome development of the country has been accompanied by a growing gulf between the poor majority and a wealthy elite, surprisingly little attention is given to the merits of past and present policies. After years of grand corruption, what people really want to see is a ruling class which regardless of belief is at least trying its best to improve life for the people. I guess people will forgive wrong policy and mistaken ideas a lot more readily than they forgive corruption. I guess in that regard Tanzanians aren’t that different to anyone else.
No comments:
Post a Comment