Zimbabwean Electricity (Zesa)

Sophie read on some local news the other day (I have to admit despite being nearly 27 I still only read sports news) that the Zimbabwean finance minister said that after paying all of its civil servants they only had $230 left in the national reserve. Therefore they cannot afford to do an election and a referendum at the same time. I have to admit that I know very little about government finances and debt but that does not sound too good to me.

It must be one of the reasons why so far in 2013 we have only had 4 full days without a power cut. Many of these are in the time where you’d use most power: 4pm-9pm in the evening. It has meant that the school day has been largely untroubled but home life is rather difficult. I am guessing that the government liaises with the electricity companies to aid businesses the best they can during the working day to boost the local economy. It’s a fair assumption seeing as electricity at the weekends is very, very unpredictable.  For example during the recent Manchester United V Liverpool game we had 6 different 5 minute power cuts which predictably fell during all 3 of the games goals.

It’s very frustrating because our whole house runs off electricity. There is no running hot water and we have an electric stove and an electric shower. We would like to get a generator to run the lights and television whilst these power cuts are going on as I’ve had some adventures cooking on our new camping stove by candle light. To be honest this started as quite an adventure and very romantic but now it is just a nuisance. A generator would make our lives much, much simpler and the house already has the facility for connecting one. They retail locally for 160 dollars which is around 100 pounds so please, if you are able, to donate and pray for funds for us towards one Sophie and I would really appreciate it.

Lots of Love

Greg (Sitting in a power cut)