The Fight for Electricity

Wednesday, March 20th, sitting in my living room in the late afternoon, the electricity flickered, dimmed, came back, dimmed a second later, came back, and then finally died all together.  Murrupula was quiet and dark.  The electricity was out everywhere, suggesting it wasn’t just a normal power outage.  The next morning I learned that the town’s transformer had exploded and burned out.  Adrienne and I joked that the bubble gum holding it all together must have fallen out.  Though we quickly realized the electricity would be out for at least a few days, it was somewhat comforting knowing that it wasn’t coming back and not feeling like we were just waiting not knowing when it’d return. 

Adrienne and I shared many dinners outside by lantern light, cooking over charcoal, going to bed early because there wasn’t much else to do.  I read an entire book in just a couple days.  Unfortunately, both Adrienne and I had a terrible cold and desperately wanted to just lie around and watch movies or TV on our computers, but our computers had died days ago.

After locking up my house Saturday night, discouraged, sick, and frustrated that the power still had not come back, I heard cheers from the neighbors both near and far.  These cheers could only mean one thing – the electricity had come back!  However, our house still remained in the dark.  It seemed every other house in Murrupula had electricity but ours.  Of course, right?  It was already 8pm though and there was not really anything we could do until the morning.

However, then it was Sunday, and people don’t do much work on Sunday.  We called up our friend Iassito to bring over an electrician to see if it was a problem with a blown fuse or something on our house, something that could be easily fixed.  The electrician confirmed our fears, it was a problem with the main electrical set-up, meaning we would have to deal with the district’s electricity company, EDM (Electricidade de Mozambique).  Iassito fortunately knew one of the two technicians who works for the company and we visited his house.  He clearly was tired and not too motivated to do much on his Sunday day of rest.  We then went to the Director of EDM’s house to see what he could do about our unlucky situation.  Unfortunately, during our walk over there, the electricity again went out for the entire town, so we were out of luck.  The Director informed us how some part he called the “juntador” was not strong enough to support the entire town’s energy usage.  Apparently it was only supposed to be for about 200 houses but there were over 1000 houses running on it now.  So they were having to selectively turn on some houses at certain times of the day and rotate the electricity usage.  Even then, however, we should have had electricity for at least some portion of the day…

Then it was Monday, and our neighbors were back with electricity again, for at least some portion of the day.  Our house, still nothing.  Arriving at the EDM office at 2pm, the director informed me that the technicians are only there at 1pm so I would have to come back tomorrow.  Another night without power.

Tuesday I went back to the office at 12:45pm, ready to make someone do something to fix our house.  Finally around 1:45pm, the director and the technician arrived and knew what I had come for.  Tuesday, they did whatever they had to do and we had electricity finally in our house later that afternoon.

Then Wednesday morning, it went out again.  Less than 24 hours had passed.  Awesome.  We held out, hoping that it was a problem with the entire town, but then Thursday, we heard our neighbor’s music and knew something was wrong…. again.

Adrienne and I both had planned to travel for the weekend, so we were going to have to wait until after to return to harass the technicians.  Hey, maybe they would figure it out while we were gone?...

We both came home Sunday, and surprise, still no electricity.  It wasn’t so much the not having electricity part that was annoying, it was the fact that everyone else had electricity and no one was doing anything despite us coming every day to complain.  It should not have been this difficult!  Definitely very frustrating…

To make a long story short, it’s Wednesday April 3^rd, and the electricity finally came back to my house today!  We’ll see how long it decides to stay on for this time…