Hardship teaches unusal lessons in Harare

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Persistent power and water outages have revived friendships and socialising in Zimbabwe, homeowners say. People see more of each other during outages that last several days, according to businessman James Martin. He visits friends across Harare to wash after making sure their taps aren't dry."We call it social bathing," he says. When the power is out, he also invites himself over for dinner, bringing supplies from his thawing freezer and warm beer for re-chilling.There was less cheer in the beer this week. With inflation spiralling, its price rose by 40% on Monday, the fourth increase since October.Martin buys scarce gasoline at five times the official price. Charges for phone calls have increased by at least 1 000% in the past year despite fast deteriorating service. Water shutoffs are blamed on pump failures and shortages of water-treatment chemicals.

Well, here in the Philippines we still have rolling brownouts in the hot season right before the monsoon starts (when hydroelectric power is low, since it is dry season, but the electricity use is high due to airconditioners)...

So everyone has a generator...

Ditto in rural Oklahoma...ice storms and thunderstorms cause wires to go down...

Of course, in Zim, the problem would be getting petrol for a generator...

And most of us here store water in buckets to bathe and cook...and fill our overhead watertanks when the electricity is running...poorer people without watertanks just leave the tap on when water pressure is low, and when the buckets are full, turn it off...the low pressure means it might take an hour to fill a ten gallon bucket...or ask a neighbor with a tank to fill a bucket.

Our neighbor has an old fashioned windmill to fill his tank...looks like I'm back in Oklahoma...

As for chemicals, the trick is to get a porcelin filter tank, and only drink from that, or boil...

Since rural people in Zim have to walk several miles in the dry season to fetch water, and tote it back on the head, I feel less than perfect sympathy for the city elite who have this minor inconvenience...