the transformer that couldn’t take it

As I may have mentioned previously, power is a bit of an issue here in Dar. Power for Tanzania is hydroelectric power- it comes from the dams that are upcountry. So when the dams are low (which they currently are) power can be a bit questionable. In the past two or so weeks we’ve had a couple of power outages, but nothing that lasted more than a few hours. So I other words, lately the power situation has been pretty great. When the power’s only out for a few hours, the fridge is okay and it’s just a minor annoyance for everything else.

So Tuesday night the power went out in our area, Upanga. And when it came back on, it decided to make sure that everyone knew it was back on, so it surged back on with a little too much power. And in its excitement, it blew the transformer for our half of the block and the block behind us. (Though we didn’t find this out until last night.) So at about 1-2 am Tuesday night (Weds morning) the power went out. Really out.

I, and everyone else in the house, slept beautifully from that point on with no fans. It’s really amazing how much a little thing like a fan can make or break the heat for you. But being tough, we all dealt with it for the rest of the night, took showers in the morning and headed to work.

After spending the day at the office with wonderful fans, we all returned home. It was a pretty funny picture, all of us upstairs sitting in the dark talking about what we were going to do for dinner and how long we thought the electricity would be off. Flashlights and candles are always an option, but just after dusk the mosquitoes are deadly, so sitting in the dark is a much better option. Then we found out from one of the guards that it was the transformer that blew. That was a happy moment.

Now, just having power off because the country doesn’t have enough electricity is one thing, but having something that needs to be fixed is a completely different timeframe for getting power again. Our problem requires a bureaucrat (who has power at his house) to send someone out to the problem to figure out what’s wrong with it (which apparently happened yesterday), to have that person have the right tools/part to fix the problem (which clearly didn’t happen yesterday), to then- and here’s the fun part- to then order the part or get the part from a supply office, to have that part/tool sent to the person who’s going to do the fixing, and to then have the person come out again and actually fix the problem. In other words, you don’t exactly measure ‘fixing time’ here in minutes.