Of Power and Power Outages

If you’ve ever lived in Africa then you probably experienced power outages at a regular basis. Some countries have the rationing system, where each region is given electricity for a certain time. My aunties used to call KPLC (Kenya -lack 0f – Power and Lighting Company), pinch their kids and say, “see, the kids are crying, can you please hurry up.”

Seeing that customer (dis)service that they have, a common response used to be, “We already announced the power outage in the newspaper. Don’t you read the papers?”

Then the debate would shift to why these women don’t read the papers. Totally not the point.

A funny Mombasa thing always happens when the power is back on. Members of the whole neighborhood collectively scream, “Hizo!!” (there it is) It has become the cue for knowing when the power comes back on. If you’re asleep you’d probably wake up from the noise.

Personally I’ve always seen some advantage to power outages (the main word here being ‘some’), but have you ever stared at the sky when the whole city is engulfed in darkness? The star-studded sky is so beautiful it can bring tears to your eyes. Now if you live in the more developed part of the world, then you probably don’t get the privilege of such a sight.

So maybe it’s a phrase that every cloud has a silver lining and there’s always light at the end of the tunnel, but my fellow Swahili friends can actually use “Stars shine brighter when there’s no power” and “After every power outage comes a loud ‘hizo’!”

  Guess that’s it for now. Leave your comments below, feel free to share and subscribe.