Hakuna Umeme

Everyone who has seen Disney's "The Lion King" knows the phrase hakuna matata. There's a new phrase I've learned: hakuna umeme, or for those who do not speak Swahili, "there is no electricity." Tanesco, Tanzania's sole supplier of electricity announced today that beginning tomorrow, most of Tanzania will have its electricity cut from 7am to 7pm daily, through December due to low water at the hydroelectric power plant. As a side note, it's typical in Tanzania to announce something with little warning. School vacation that starts on a Monday is announced the previous Friday, for example.

For a little more background:
http://www.ippmedia.com/ipp/guardian/2006/06/07/67914.html
http://english.people.com.cn/200606/08/eng20060608_272152.html

Amani is going to try to buy a generator to keep the office up and running. Of course, I have a laptop, but without power, it'll die eventually. Without power, we won't have any Internet, and we don't know if the cell phone towers will have generators.

Talk about a GDP killer. It's stuff like this that really hurts growth in East Africa. While 80% or more of the population here does not have electricity, and many of those that do tend to only have a light bulb, there are many organizations and others that rely on electricity to get through their day-to-day operations. People are pretty annoyed that they'll miss a lot of the World Cup.

The next week will be interesting. Unless we do some work at night, I won't be in the office to post anything while there is no electricity.

Since we still have the pizza from last Thursday (the power was out at KCMC for several hours last Thursday--interesting to see a major hospital in the dark, at least they have generators for the most important stuff) in the freezer, we are planning to eat that tonight. Last night we pasteurized some more milk and now the milk is sitting in the refrigerator separating. It'll probably spoil. Hopefully there isn't much else that will spoil.