How Long? They Said Tuesday FFS

Tonight we are sitting under our own electricity again and have been for most of the day already. This is not the normal 4 hour load shedding that has been common in any South African's daily life over the last few years though.

The reports coming in is that the transformer at the local sub station has blown. There was a team out their this morning and only know are they repairing it and don't even know if that is possible. Apparently a new one to be installed and tested takes days. This may not be the case in another country, but this is Africa and we are on African time.

I am often dubious when things take so long to fix as many times it is not the case and the staff do it on purpose to make over time. Today is Sunday so that is double pay and most likely double over time as well. In some cases you can't blame them for maximizing the opportunities as most likely their managers don't know how to fix the problem anyway and got their position from who they knew and not what they know.

This is the only place that I know where it takes three people to dig one hole. One to drive you there ,one to watch and one to do the digging. This is genuine and laughable but when digging happens there are more people watching than digging. This 4 person team kind of resembles that in the photograph where one person is checking what is wrong up top another is looking busy rummaging for tools or parts whilst another is checking their phone and obviously the one taking the photograph is probably their driver.

I suppose we can't really complain too much as I read tonight that some suburbs have been out for 7 days now and counting. We have a generator at least which allows us most plugs to be used except some vitals like the stove,microwave,kettle and geyser/boiler. The barbecue is gas so we can still cook and boil water for tea and coffee, but showering is a no and hoping they are underestimating their talents and tomorrow morning everything is working.

I can do without most luxuries but call me fussy as I like to be clean and shower twice daily and sometimes more depending on the heat of the day and what I am doing. In the past I used to use my gym membership to use the facilities when we had outages but these days gyms are shut and those avenues are not going to work. The friends I would call are also in the same boat so maybe I will find somewhere tomorrow thinking out the box.

Not thinking positively right now as I just know the original snippet of information mentioning Tuesday was probably the only honest thing I have heard from an official in years.