There was almost unstoppable joy and jubilation at our house last Thursday when I bought a six-kilowatt generator to provide electricity during the usually dark nights. This heralded an end to my family’s long deprivation from watching television, surfing the internet and doing homework in the evenings.

In the past few years Zimbabweans have experienced extended power cuts due to failure by the national power utility, Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) to acquire and properly manage electricity supplies in the country.
 

Our neighbourhood is now heavily polluted with noise and choking fumes coming from different sizes of mainly Chinese-made generators at every other house - the very reason that caused my procrastination in acquiring the essential family asset.

In March, we purchased a gas stove after a long spell of firewood cooking, which had its ugly toll on our pots, pans, chests and facial complexions, in addition to causing some serious depletion of forests and woodlands in order to supply cities with firewood.

Well or borehole?
With the generator in place, our next battle is with perennial water shortages. We only have running water once every Friday for which the national water utility, Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) places blame on acute shortages of foreign currency to purchase treatment chemicals and repair ever bursting rotten old pipes.

We have to fill up several drums, buckets and pots so that we have enough water for cooking, drinking, laundry and bathing, to last seven days. As for our garden, it can wait for Fridays. A family strategic solution has been devised; funds permitting, we are thinking of digging a well, just like what most of our neighbors have done, since sinking a borehole is costly and still out of our reach.

Our entire leafy suburb now resembles a typical rural village atmosphere, although we are extremely grateful to some non-governmental organisations which sunk some boreholes at strategic corners. Our gardener’s single wheelbarrow trip to the borehole, with a small drum and two jerry cans is able to top up our strategic water reserves before tap water returns on Friday.

Bailing out hospitals
When my sister-in-law Tino was admitted to a high density maternity hospital last month her family was asked to provide water for her bathing together with the newly-born baby since ZINWA supplies were also erratic there. In her delivery kit was also included a packet of candles since the ZESA switching timetable also leaves some clinics without electricity for several days.

Schools, factories and commercial buildings are not spared of extended periods of power and water cuts, thus forcing them to close down abruptly - with a detrimental effect on our education and economy.

Archaic lifestyles back
When most black people moved to up-market city suburbs from townships and rural areas, especially at independence from colonialism in 1980, they did not expect to go back to archaic lifestyles in their lifetime. Some had even forgotten how to light up a fire for cooking. Today’s children know candles from birthday parties and church services but remember wells and firewood cooking from visits to their grannies in the rural areas during school holidays.

Welcome to our urban villages!

Click on the icon below to listen to Winos Dube, chairman of Bulawayo Residents Association, being interviewed on the importance of paying rate charges so that the city can provide  services like water reticulation, sewage and waste removal which are essential for the development of the city.

Photo : John Harooga Flickr.CC