Power Politics

Somewhere between Thursday night and Friday morning last week somebody cut and removed the power cables that connect our house to the municipal power supply in Dar es Salaam. That company's employees are apparently quite notorious for sabotaging their own system for the value of making individual users pay to have (probably the same) cables repaired/replaced.

We've been running on generator power since then. Kobus drags himself down the two flights of stairs to the behemoth when he's having his first smoke in the morning. He starts it up and it rumbles and vibrates through the entire building through the day and into the evening powering the offices downstairs and most of our flat on top at a cost of about C$60/day. Of course we're thankful for the light, computers , A/C and the tv but unfortunately (for reasons that might have to be the subject of another post) the stove is not on the circuit connected to the generator. So we've been camping in the kitchen for a week, using a gas cylinder with a burner screwed into it. One pot dinners get a little tired after a few days.

So today after interminable runaround with the police who need to be well paid for the necessary report to the power company, the later came up with two quotes handwritten on a couple pages torn from an exercise book. The first quote was for "official" service and the lesser quote was for "unofficial" service. There is little information available on the added value of the official service beyond paying twice the price as the work is done by the same people with the same equipment. I suppose there would be little in the way of reciepts for the cash handed over which would be a problem on company expenses.

Because the international company Kobus works for requires something a little more official looking, even in terms of quotations for service, the envoy was sent back to request same...which brings us to mid-afternoon friday and a better than average chance that we're in for another weekend of generator power.

I think that we'll have to take ourselves to the beach on Sunday.

On Angels' Wings

Getting a lift to an early morning training session with some guards at the mall, the company pickup is overtaken on a terribly potholed and rutted corner by a sedan which used the oncoming "lane"/path to accelerate forward then nose itself back into the line of traffic just before it caused a jam with an oncoming bus. Through the tinted windows I can catch glimpses of highly coiffed, dyed and straightened female hair on the driver. One of her numerous passengers is a youngish muzungu hanging on for dearl life. She careens into the oncoming late around all the next few corners as we follow her. My driver *tsks* at her alarming habit of straddling the center line even on the straight bits of road. He overtakes her just ahead of an uncontrolled roundabout where she could cause un-told chaos. The sticker in her back windown read: "On Angels' Wings." Indeed.