January Reflections

 
I had good intentions for this year.  I was going to get up early, do yoga, meditate and write every day.  Days would be interspersed with long walks, the preparation of big, wholesome, healthy family meals, and the reading of all the books I haven’t got round to reading yet. 

                All was on course until around 11 am on January 1^st, when the electricity went off.  It hadn’t actually been on that long as we had been almost two weeks without it, but this time it seriously drained me of any resolve.

                Of course, I did not need electricity for anything I had planned, unless you include following a yoga schedule on YouTube or using my laptop to ‘write’ on.  However, there is something about a power cut that really does drain the environment of energy or purpose.  So much time is wasted making another plan, which in our case, as we don’t have a generator or solar, is also very tiring.  Time that had been allocated to reading and writing and twisting myself up into all sorts of yogic shapes, was now spent boiling water on the braai (barbecue), taking food to friends’ houses so they could keep it in their freezers, handwashing clothes and shopping every day for things like milk and pet food.

                I found it was not just this added physical burden that made life difficult, but it was also the fact that, ironically, so much energy was focused on the problem, that everything else seemed even more difficult to do.  The very things I needed to be doing in order to escape the power cut cloud, seemed difficult to concentrate on. Days seemed to pass without me having achieved very much at all.

                And it’s not over.  After a week of being one phase down (so no lights) we have been without any power at all for six days and it is certainly not going to be restored this weekend. It’s a big cut this time as 1600 metres of cabling has been stolen in my neighbourhood. This kind of theft could only be carried out by people who know what they are doing, have the equipment with which to do it, the right vehicle to transport the cabling, and the means and connections by which to sell it on. There is really no doubt at all the power supply company, ZETDC, or at least a number of its employees, must be involved.

                Our local whatsapp chat group is full of interesting bits of information, such as a security guard at a house seeing a ZETDC truck with no number plates parked on the road one night at 10 pm.  When approached, it apparently drove off. Someone else saw a ‘ZETDC-looking’ truck with an extendable ladder on the back leaving Hillside at 5am. Another contributor suggested police complicity as they don’t turn up when alerted to the fact that cable theft is underway. ZETDC’s rather farcical response to allegations that they are complicit in the thefts is that the real thieves are so wealthy that they have gone to the extent of buying the same trucks that ZETDC has and printing their logo on them.

                The upside of this electricity debacle is that it has given me much food for thought.  After writing All Come To Dust, I didn’t feel inclined to write another crime novel, but since then I have discovered that crime is an excellent way to explore the moral decay at the heart of Zimbabwean society. 

                One of the suggestions put forward by a member of the community is that we hire a private investigator to find out what is really going on.  When I read this, I really wanted to wave my hand in the air and say, ‘I’ll do it! I’ll do it!’  Some people fantasize about being a paramedic or a marine; my fantasy is of being a PI.  However, sadly I don’t think I would quite blend into the background if I posed as a ZETDC employee, or even if I crept out at night and watched the comings and goings on the road. The next best thing is to be a writer and create my own private investigator who will go forth and, maybe not put things right, but at least join the dots.  And there are lots of dots in Zimbabwe.