We lose more than power and water during outages

I sat in the dark crying.

Our house was quiet. My son was asleep while my husband cast a despondent figure  staring into the darkness of the night.

There was no humming of the fridge or freezer. 

My sobbing cut through the silence.

The first tears were born out of frustration. But the final ones came from a place of helplessness and ultimately hopelessness.

I sat in the dark crying over electricity — or lack of it.

Living in Durban over the past few months has affected my emotional state. I am frustrated and sad daily.

It started in August when my suburb was hit by what eThekwini municipality termed “water shedding”, during which our water supply is available for no more than four hours a day.

No schedule was issued, therefore we couldn’t plan. For most of the day and night, our water supply came from five-litre water bottles — which we refilled daily and stored in every available space in our house and yard.

Going to the toilet became stressful, forcing me to temporarily stop a chronic medication known to bring on an “upset tummy”.

We thought the “powers that be” would be generous during Christmas. It is the most generous and wonderful time of the year, right?  We were wrong. We were subjected to an incomprehensible three-day power outage and water cut from Christmas Day to December 27.

And then the rolling blackouts started.

On Friday, the power went out at 4pm.

By Saturday afternoon, a puddle of water surrounded our fridge and chest freezer. Our phones and laptops were dead.

We didn’t sleep on Friday night as it was too hot. We were anxious about leaving our doors open so we spent most of the night awake

We didn’t sleep on Friday night as it was too hot. We were anxious about leaving our doors open so we spent most of the night awake. 

“It’s OK. We will rough it,” I declared as I boiled a pot of water on the gas stove for hot water to bath.

But the puddle got bigger, something smelled off in the fridge and five litres of ice cream in our freezer was now liquid. We had to eventually throw away the contents of fridge and freezer.

With what little battery life I had on my phone, I posted about our ordeal on social media.

The comments showed I was not alone.

The recent water-shedding, load-shedding, random power outages and water cuts have not just hit our pockets and robbed us of our comforts and basic rights such as access to water. It is taunting an already fragile nation — Covid-19, the July unrest, rising food costs, inflation and high crime rates have been chipping away at our emotional states.

Load-shedding and water cuts have the potential to plunge us into further mental distress.  

We are anxious. We are frustrated. We are helpless. We are sad.

I am sad for me, my family and everyone hit by it.

And I am sad for South Africans, who actually don’t have water and electricity at all every day for years.

I am just sad.

I am sad that no-one is hearing our plight or seeing how we are suffering. I am sad that we do not get more than the standard line:  “We apologise for the inconvenience.”