Power failure

It is Friday morning quarter past six, we are awake but still in bed. In fifteen minutes I have to get up to get Niels, who is still asleep, ready for school. Dennis is wide awake already and is playing.

All of a sudden we hear a loud bang and the power goes off, since we are wide awake now we decide to get up. Corné goes out to have a look and after a few minutes he is back with the message that two of the fuses of our three phase power are blown. We immediately call Eskom (our power supplier) and they tell us someone will be there within six hours

to fix it. Fortunately one phase is still working and that is the one where the office and the kitchen are on, so our computer and the kettle work. At least we can look at our e-mail and Corné can have his coffee.

I leave to take Niels to school and since there is no gym class today (the teacher is injured), I take Dennis with me. He likes it very much and together we go shopping before we go home again. When I get home there has been no one from Eskom and at half past twelve when Corné comes back from town with Niels there is still no one. At one o clock I call them again, since the six hours have passed now, and they tell me that someone is on the way. Corné starts the generator for a while so the freezer won’t defrost completely. Although we had some power in the kitchen, it was not enough to let the freezer work properly. The advantage is that we can switch on the air conditioner in the house and that the kids can watch some television. After an hour we switch of the generator again, since the service man should be here any minute now…

Only at half past two, after another telephone call, someone arrives at our gate. He replaces the fuses and within fifteen minutes we have power again, for as long as it lasts. Because here in the African bush, working electricity is not such a matter of course as it is in the Netherlands. This kind of incidents makes one realize how dependent we are of these modern technologies. Oh, if we have to we can do without. When we came here seven years ago we had no electricity and it took six weeks to get connected. But life is a lot easier with electricity and I am glad that it is fixed again. 

Regards from the bush

Miriam