Blackouts

I don’t know how well it’s been publicized in the States, but there’s been something of a power crisis here. In order to conserve power, the South African government has decided to instate two-hour intervals of cut power. There’s a schedule of when they are, and they can last anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours, depending. It seems that this still isn’t enough. On Friday, power cut off at about 9pm and came on around 4am. This blackout wasn’t planned, and it’s got a lot of people thinking that there is worse to come.  

At 9pm on Friday, I was getting ready to go to dinner and just finishing my makeup. That was the day we climbed Table Mountain, so no one wanted to cook. The lights flickered twice, and then everything cut off. It’s interesting how you come to rely on certain things; constant power, constant water, clean clothes. It’s also interesting how a person responds when forced to do without these things.  I never really thought about the importance of power before, and how life must go on in the midst of non-functional traffic lights and refrigerators.  

      

As I walked out the door, still adventurous and hungry enough to catch a cab into town for dinner, the city was quiet and eerie. The stars were bright and poignant in the absence of street lamps. Shops closed, and people took to the streets. We felt a sense of danger in the pervading helplessness; what, in realistic terms, could be done? We ate   dinner in a candlelit cafe in the suburb Observatory. While content with our intimate experience in this small restaurant, we waited with a kind of impatience for the return of light, and thus, security.  

Dinner finished without a hitch, thanks to a talented and resilient waitress, and we walked to a street corner to wait for a cab to take us home. Traffic was crawling. With the loss of traffic lights, there was no regulation, and no one was forced to stop.  We stood, watching these cars go by, looking at each one with a wish that it had come to take us back to our apartments. As our cab finally turned around a corner, our exasperated driver Al shook his head in disbelief. He felt a sense of helplessness similar to and perhaps worse than ours. As the outage shut down factories and interfered with manufacturing, with vendors, with municipalities and homes, it affected Al’s livelihood and his ability to provide for his family. But what could he do? What could anyone do but accept the situation as a lesson in resilience and forge ahead with life as usual?   

 

A planned blackout occurred yesterday around 3:30pm, as I was putting my clothes into a dryer in a laundromat down the street.  As the lights went out, I placed my soggy clothes into a plastic bag they offered me. I trudged home with a load twice as heavy as the one I came with, watching the steady stream of cars crawling past blank traffic lights. I hung my things on hangers and self-fashioned clotheslines across my apartment and balcony, hoping that they would dry in time and not blow away.  They remain wet, waving in the breeze that comes off the mountain. I know they’ll smell fresh when they’re dry, and I’ll feel a sense of accomplishment, if not ingenuity. I also know that my inconveniences, however grand they may seem, are slight in comparison to those who are sent home from work early, or cannot buy food for their families because all of the stores have closed. 

With the World Cup looming ahead in 2010, South Africa stands to gain so much. But as she struggles to rise to the challenges set forth, her weaknesses begin to show.  It will be interesting to see how the power crisis will be addressed by the government, if it is at all. Will FIFA choose another location, thus taking from South Africa a huge opportunity for income and positive publicity, which she needs so desperately in the midst of her growing pains? I look to how the country’s people demonstrate their adaptability, ever hopeful for a tomorrow that is full of light.