Showing posts with label load shedding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label load shedding. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Art of darkness

A load off
Kathmandu

It's really, really, really dark here a whole lot of the time. Not too cold, mind you...but dark.


"Load-shedding," the south Asian euphemism for scheduled power cuts, has taken hold now for more than 49 hours per week. A few months ago I heard it would be up to 65 hours a week before the winter's end.

I went to the Nepal Electric Authority website to try to download the "new schedule," which seems to change daily. At least, I thought, I can schedule stuff (showers, battery charging, computer work) around the blackouts.

Not only is the schedule posted on their English language website all in Nepali script, it's too small even for someone who can read Nepali (ie, me) to decipher. The rest of the web site (all in English) is devoted to explaining the plan for ending the load-shedding problem "within the next four years."

It's one thing to have scheduled power cuts. But they are not even following the schedule. For instance, today's posted cuts were from 11.30am-1.30 pm and then again in evening. At 2pm, the power was still on, only to cut off at 3pm instead.

Various people try to excuse or defend load-shedding in various ways:

--We depend on hydroelectricity and the rivers are frozen
(This was true in Ladakh, north India in the wintertime, too. But they made a schedule and stuck to it. Midnight to 6pm, every day. From 6pm, when it got really dark, we had power till midnight.)

When the rivers weren't frozen, back in September, it was

--The broken dam in Butwal (south Nepal/Bihar region) means there is less ability to produce power

But, before the dam disaster which displaced tens of thousands of people, other excuses were:

--One of the hydroelectric projects went down and it will take three years (THREE) to fix

or,

--We have greater hydroelectric potential, with all our rivers, than any country in the world; however we haven't been able to finish the incomplete dam projects. The money disappeared somewhere

or even,
--we actually DO produce lots of power...but we need cash so we sell the resultant power to India.

Probably elements of all the above are true. The only excuse I do not accept, at all, is:

--This is a developing country.


It WAS a developing country. No longer. In the past three years, things have gone backward. It's more like a de-volving country.

Of course, for me and many city-dwellers, the inconvenience extends only so far as inability to charge my cell phone, or take a hot shower, use a credit card, or get a cafe latte. What about those trying to run factories, restaurants and offices? Zero productivity.

I really feel for those trying to sew garments or manufacture toothpaste. The tailors with their foot-pedalled machines and the chai-wallahs with propane stoves are really better off.

Most nights I read myself to sleep with a flashlight. What about the schoolkids struggling to do homework in the early dark (around 4.30 pm here now)?

Sales of diesel and kerosene fuel should be booming; let's just pray that the Terai (Nepal's flat, dusty corridor to the Indian "mainland") stays open, since that's where all the fuels are imported from. The largest places (star hotels, for example, or major supermarkets) have diesel generated backup.

Crime has gone up in the city, as not only is there an earlier dusk these days, but the streets are completely dark a great deal of the night. Sometimes it seems the power is off more than it's actually on. People, especially women, are forced home earlier.

Of all the things Nepalis have rioted and shut down the city or valley over - raised transport fares, petrol prices, unsolved murders and unavailable school textbooks -why doesn't anyone get up in arms about this?

It would almost be better to be up in a remote village where no one relies on electricity, and everyone goes to bed at 8pm anyway.

PACKING LIST FOR KATHMANDU:
Glow-in-the-dark clothing
Flashlight with extra extra batteries
Candles and matches or lighter
Solar-powered charger
Head-lamp
Battery-powered everything
One of those deep-sea fish that have lamps growing out of their foreheads

Monday, February 11, 2008

Subterranean homesick news

Get sick, get well, hang around an inkwell
Kathmandu

I'm still sick as a dog. Spent most of the day in a darkened room like a vampire,
because sunlight exacerbates the migraine.

When I arrived, I had all these great plans for day trips in the Valley. But going
anywhere at all means - at minimum - a 45 minute drive, lurching and careening
over seriously potholed roads, breathing in carbon monoxide constantly, so that
by the time I arrive I'm too nauseous to do anything.

And because of the petrol shortage, the taxi fees are extortionate now - it costs
$4 to get to Boudha from Thamel. (Three times the price when I arrived in
2005.) And you have to beat the drivers down to get even that price out of
them. "Mahango chha - ma paryatak hoinna! Ma muggar hoinna! ("That is too
expensive - I am not a tourist and not a stupid chicken!")


There are privately run mini-buses (actual, officially run municipal buses are
almost unheard of in Nepal) but they creep along in the traffic, taking an hour to
get almost anywhere. And, one of them was bombed last September. Tends to make one paranoid.

If you are coming to Kathmandu, be sure to bring or buy:
-a flashlight
-candles for the frequent power outages
-sweaters and blankets, since there is no heat in the buildings and the power's
always out
-a book, since you can't use the TV, the internet or your laptop most of the day.
-a gas mask. Kathmandu is officially the most polluted city in Asia now. (The
most polluted city in the world is Mexico City.)
-I have a dormant Nepali cell phone account but don't see any need to revive it -
literally half the time the lines are jammed.
-Oh, and bring a lot of patience, and a big smile.

I still haven't figured this one out yet. By comparison, India is developing so
fast, the economy is booming, the middle class is fat and happy and yet, the people themselves are all so PISSED OFF.

Nepal, on the other hand, is just barely getting by, and the people are so gentle, smiling and humble. You see very little obesity here - Nepalis count themselves lucky to eat dall bhatt twice a day. And they don't complain.

I think the difference is, Nepalis never got fed the post-independence propaganda of being a great, important country. Indians have been indoctrinated with hype about how they're going to be running the world by 2020, ever since 1947.

This guy (Tim Johnson, Beijing bureau chief for McClatchy) has a good description of what it's
like to try to get anything done here now.


...before you congratulate me on finagling a work-related trip to Kathmandu, let
me describe the situation here.


For at least eight hours a day, there is no electricity. Luckily my hotel has a
generator, but it is only enough to power an overhead light and my computer.
There is no heat when the power is off.

I’ve eaten dinner by candlelight ever since arriving four days ago.

The roads are congested beyond belief. People complain about
traffic in Beijing.
It is nothing compared to Kathmandu.
Walking is good exercise. But not for the
reason you might think. I’ve repeatedly had to leap for safety while on the
sidewalk to avoid getting hit by careening motorcycles and scooters.

At least in Beijing, while stuck in traffic, one can work the cell phone. Even that
luxury is unavailable here. The cellular phone circuits are so congested – like the
roads – that I’ve
repeatedly given up trying to make calls after dialing 10 or 20
times.


In short, Nepal is the least developed country I’ve visited in Asia, although I
confess I haven’t been to Papua New Guinea. Frankly, I’d compare Nepal to
Haiti, where I worked quite a bit in the early 1990s.

Speaking of power outages, anybody who travels outside of Europe or North
America these days will likely learn a new phrase – “load shedding.”

I heard it a lot in Pakistan and wasn’t quite sure what it meant.
Pakistan, or at
least the area around Islamabad, is
enduring
3-5 hours of blackouts each day.
Which seemed like a lot, until I came to Nepal.
Load shedding is the word de
jure to describe rolling blackouts designed to keep overburdened power grids
from collapsing.