I have been struggling to get to the blog. The 2 ½ hour battery time on my laptop has been mostly devoted to study and less on keeping in touch. Don’t interpret this as a complaint, but it’s an indication of the daily challenges when fuel, electricity and water are in short supply. The challenges are small for me, but I’m getting to understand the disruption to people’s lives when urban dwellers lose power and water. The photo is not the best, but it’s an indication of the many fuel queues around Bulawayo at the moment. That’s if the petrol stations have fuel, and there are numerous days when you pass a forecourt that is quiet and deserted. One taxi driver says he sometimes queues 5 hours to fill up: that’s almost a day’s work to get fuel for the remainder of the week. Small hikes in price make a big difference in people’s lives. Especially when load shedding is in full swing, and electricity is off for about 14 hours per day and only on from 10pm to 4am. People’s routines are changed: housework, garden watering (water is also off for several days each week and stored water requires pumping), and studying (for older students) is now done at night. The younger children miss out on study time—of great importance in the Zimbabwe culture—mobile phone coverage reduces as providers become reluctant to pay the fuel to power the transmitters, and laboratories lie idle where they cannot be powered by generators. These examples are just the tip of the iceberg and, unlike in Australia, there’s no safety net of a power company reimbursing their customers for the lengthy outages. The community bears the cost. I fall within the group lucky enough to be in a household that can afford a generator, though its running is carefully managed due to the vagaries of availability and price. I will fill you in another day as to why this is happening, but I invite you to ponder the title.

Ps The power just came back on at 9.20pm. A 40 minute bonus tonight.