Wednesday October 8, 2009
We have been having power outages almost daily. On yesterday the power went off just before 8 PM and was off for a few hours. We went to light a candle but discovered we were out of matches. Today there was no power from around 10AM until some time after 4 PM. We were unable to cook lunch at home so we went to the College canteen, which cooks with charcoal, so lack of electricity is not a problem. Lunch at the canteen is always the same: a huge mound of rice, a few pieces of very chewy beef, a sauce made mostly from tomatoes but also having a few carrots and peppers, a green vegetable, and sometimes small bananas. I think I must have gotten the last of the beef and green vegetable, because Karen, and Godfrey Ndalama, (one of the tutors) who came in after me, got only rice, sauce, and banana. In the evening the power went off again shortly after 7 (It is fully dark by then) and stayed off until about 9:45. We did have candlelight because we had borrowed matches from the office. In think I have now perfected the art of reading by flashlight.
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Yesterday the electricity was off from around 7:30 AM until about 4 PM. We later heard that the national electricity supplier had announced that due to shortage of generation capacity there would be rolling blackouts throughout the country. Tanzania uses water power to generate electricity and apparently the water level is low. Around 3 PM it clouded over and the air felt as if rain had fallen somewhere, but we got none. At 3:30 PM the College driver with the Acting Principal’s car picked us up at the house to take us to visit the former principal’s home. Along the way we stopped and picked up the Acting Principal who was on his way back from Mbeya. The former principal lives in a large house surrounded by a high wall pierced by a metal gate. The home is located far off the highway back in the usual warren of bumpy dusty unpaved roads. It seems that even though the locals tell us how safe Tanzania is, there are many houses that are in walled enclosures. We were to have done some traveling during the College holiday but as yet the College car is still undergoing repair. This morning Mwankenja took us to services at a small Lutheran congregation several kilometers beyond the city along the Tanzam highway. It was the first time we were at a service that was not packed full. The evangelist who was conducting the service said that there had been a death in the neighborhood and many parishioners had apparently gone to the mourning instead of coming to church. This is a struggling congregation that is conducting a “tentmaking” project—they are constructing a strip mall of sorts that will be rented out to businesses for use as small shops, as a means of increasing income to the congregation. After we returned to the house there seemed to be thunder coming from the direction of Mbeya but once again we have gotten no rain here at the campus.