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2月2日 So dark, and no tea!What it is to live in Africa ...
If you live somewhere other than Africa, you've probably not experienced much in the way of power outages. South Africa is currently suffering from a combination of reasonably rapid economic growth, coupled with bad planning at high levels of government. Our new (well new-ish by now) government was so eager to get rid of white faces in para-statals that they chased away most of the experienced engineers - especially in one particular company known as Eskom. Eskom is our one and only power utility, and they have an absolute monopoly.
With the influx of new blood during the ousting of the old guard, empires were on the make, and the main focus was cost containment with a view to garnering fat bonuses for the top executives. Most of this cost saving was achieved by cutting capital expenditure - in english: "These fools haven't built a new power station since 1994!"
So here we are in 2008 with an economy which has grown at around 5% per year, and yes, power usage has escalated at the same pace! But that's not all ... there has been a massive drive to bring electricty to all previously disadvantaged households as well. This is all beautiful except that the reserves present for peak load periods and scheduled maintenance which were present in 1994, have now all been used in general supply!
Why am I going on about all this? Well - I'm sitting in the dark hoping my laptop's battery will last until I finish ths blog! I'm connected to the internet through the wonder of my cellular phone's modem capability, because at least the cellphone companies had the foresight to cater for power outages in their cell towers. But that's it, outside it is as black as the country side, and I'm in the middle of a city!
Oh, and one more thing: As if brown-outs weren't enough, the African criminal community have taken to using the switch-offs as golden opportunity for stealing the copper cables used to convey our electricty! This means that often when the supply is restored, we still don't have power until new cables are installed. What a mess :-(
Anyway, that said I am still proud to be a South African. All my country needs now is strong leadership, someone like Britain's Maggie Thatcher to take on the lazy, and the corrupt and set things straight. I think we have the right people, they just need to "step up." If you're a believer, pray for South Africa's leadership every day. Prayer led us to a peaceful transition from "Aparteid," and God can bring us good leaders too.
Enough about my country.
I promised more about my romantic life, and here it is: M broke it off mostly because her ex husband had been giving her a hard time about hooking up with someone so soon after her divorce. He maintained that it was "not proper" and he was making her life miserable as a result. She couldn't just walk away because they share a son! Last weekend she stopped by his place to make sure her son had enough clothing to last the weekend, and was stopped in the passage by her ex because he had someone there! Evidently the "proper" rule only operates in one direction.
My take on all this is that it changes everything between her and I. With her ex involved with someone, he can't very well be insisting that she stay single, and this seems to be coming out in her communication with me. She has sent many more messages in the last few days, and the tone has definitely softened considerably! I'm very pleased :-)
I'm not counting my chickens just yet, but the future just might look a little rosier...
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