The Darker Side of Load-Shedding

Yesterday I got a large dose of Johannesburg-style chaos...and it all starts with load shedding. Load shedding is the term for alternating, scheduled power outages--at the end of apartheid, in 1994, only 30% of South Africans had electricity; now, 70% do, and the South African government did not adequately plan for this huge increase (they certainly had a lot of other things on their plate). So now parts of the city go dark...this has been exacerbated by several straight days of rain. Yesterday started out innocently enough--I attended a Themba performance at a local high school, which was very interesting because up until now I had only seen them perform at the jail. On the way back to the office in Eric's car, the traffic lights went out, and in the resulting standstill traffic his clutch started to burn out. We waited two hours for a tow truck, and were then driven to his house, since none of the taxi companies were answering their phones and I had no way to get home...

Since my first days in Johannesburg I have been repeatedly warned about one neighborhood: Hillbrow. It is a no-go zone...so yesterday evening, in our tow truck with Eric's car hitched to the back, we went straight through...Hillbrow. If I didn't know to be scared, I wouldn't have necessarily, because there is no way to tell that it's not safe, really, but I did know and I was scared. At 9:30, when I finally managed to track a cab down that would take me home, I instructed the driver to make sure to avoid a second trip through...the drive home was truly surreal. Johannesburg is deserted, every other block is pitch black, the days of rain making already drab settings even more so...it felt almost post-apocalpytic in some ways...as we turned down my street it was clear that the power was out in Melville as well, driving through a dark tunnel to my guest house and climbing into bed in a freezing room with no heat...I saw something different in this city last night, the flip side. There is much optimism here, but a not insignificant pessimism too...

I have only one full day left with Themba, which is sad...I will miss it here. Today I was interviewed by a staff member, what have I learned, what have I taken away about Africa? So much. I still have a trip to Soweto, a safari, and Cape Town ahead of me, but the transition from traveler to tourist will certainly be interesting...