Power Outages in Jozi

I am currently writing this while surrounded by darkness. The power is out...again.

It's becoming almost a daily occurrence to have the power go out.

The infrastructure is so poor that it cannot handle the demands of the city so the municipal government has implemented rolling blackouts. There is an ongoing load shedding schedule where each neighbourhood is cut off for a few hours. It wouldn't be as bad, if not for the blackouts that also occur randomly due to transformer issues or electric storms. There are intense storms that usually roll in quickly in the summer afternoons and clear up quickly, but the lightning that occurs during these storms tends to wreak havoc on the electrical systems.

Every day I pass through at least one set of traffic lights (robots as the South Africans say) that is out.

Everything in my fridge is going to spoil; such a waste of money.

My worry is that everyone says come winter time here, the outages will get even worse with a larger strain on the systems. Let's just say, I am NOT looking forward to that.

Game plan:

- small grocery shops every couple days so if food spoils, I'm not losing much (this is so not feasible)

- invest in a good flashlight

- keep my portable phone charger always charged
- freeze a couple big blocks of ice so when the power goes out I can move them into the fridge and keep food cool (thanks for the addition, Dad!)