Heavy Power Rationing

The whole year, we've had pretty heavy power cuts here in Arusha. Since getting back from Ghana, though, it's been even worse. We've been losing power for 8-16 hours nearly every day. In theory, the power gets cut at 8 AM one day and then comes back at 5 PM, then the next day, the power is off until 8 AM, on until 5 PM, and then cut off again until midnight. In reality, they like to throw the switch on or off at random times throughout the week*. They keep to the schedule just well enough that you expect it to be reliable, and then I get really frustrated as it switches off while I'm in the middle of work. I've been mostly working off a desktop computer, so as soon as the power goes off, so does my work.

In order to be productive when I can, I've spent a lot of nights taking advantage of the electricity while it's there. The power is most predictable during the midnight to 8 AM stretch, so I try to make the most of it. Unfortunately, as someone who is known for erratic sleep patterns, I stay up until about 4 AM on average and was awake to see 4 sunrises last week. I rarely get out of bed before 10 AM and on weekends, I can easily sleep until 2. Well, I never really was a morning person. Today I was out of bed at 8:30 and considered it a huge accomplishment.

I don't really know what the situation is at Tanesco (the Tanzanian Electric Supply Company), but it is really infuriating. There were rumors that they were increasing supply at the start of the month, but that was supposed to be in September. Now that it's the start of October, the situation has been a lot better. We've had power for about 20 hours per day. I remain cautiously optimistic.

* A few times, the electricity has been off for longer than 24 hours, one time it reached 60 hours. There was one really beautiful stretch where it stayed on for 48 hours.