Eishkom!!          - 6/5/2015      <--Prev : Next-->

I really do feel so much for our poor cousins south of the border with these power outages.

We were 'down south' recently and it was a literal nightmare. Whenever the power went off, the City Of Johannesburg literally came to a standstill!!

Possibly one of the worst disturbances is the lack of power at the traffic lights 'aka robots.'
Most people are well behaved and go into the 'first come first served' robotic mode but this slows down the traffic incredibly, and it takes absolutely ages to get anywhere. Now we here in Zim do not have that problem cos our robots seldom work at any rate, and also our car population is one hundred- thousandth of the size of that of Johannesburg.

In addition the shops seem to close down, certainly the shops in the malls do, where there is no God - given lighting. We are almost devoid of malls in Bulawayo, so the shops mostly have natural light. Another drawback is the fact that all the SA transactions are electronic, so if the power goes down - there are no hand written invoices like one gets in Zim!!

Fortunately our electricity supply commission seldom turns off the 'ZESA' in the CBD ....

Now Eskom or 'Eishkom' as it has been nicknamed - has a great app called EskomsePush which pushes out notices to the cell phones, about impending power cuts.

Our fellows here in Zimbabwe don't forewarn us - they just 'do it'!! There is a semblance of order, but most of the time our power outages are haphazard, added to which the electricity supply is so antiquated, there are many power outages due to faults.

Now a word of comfort to our Southern cousins ! - Dealing with power outages successfully and graciously does come with time. We are totally over the 'lets play monopoly by candlelight' stage, we are now just totally browbeaten! Those of us lucky enough to afford inverters, resort to games on our mobile phones and those of us lucky enough to have generators, just turn them on and 'deal with it'.

I just wish I had a generator manufacturing company in Johannesurg, my goodness I would be wealthy soon....

I have made up my mind that in future I am going to be positive. For example I am going to say 'yay we have ZESA' which is most of the time, rather than 'boo hoo we have no ZESA' - which is only a small part of the time.


HOME REMEDIES

Like your home of old, ours too had it's cannot be without remedies! Dr. Collis-Browns' Chloridine, for upset stomachs, TCP for sore throats (now again available as 3CP, don't know what's been taken out), a strange concoction my Mother picked up from, Paul Veller of Veller Kennels fame, cider vinegar, lemon and honey for coughs and colds. Then there was some weird mixture, which escapes me now but contained a dubious zinc, lead and opium or whatever, ointment for sprained limbs, calamine lotion for stings and bites and the never to be sneezed at, Zambuk, which although I feel not as efficacious now as it was, still holds pride of place in our current home!!!

How come we've all managed to live to the age of silver hair, (no hair, or teeth), notwithstanding, having been fed all these terrible substances I can remember being very proud of a "rock collection", which contained real furry asbestos from Shabani. If I lived in Britain or America they would have whisked me away in a high security contamination suit!

I suppose now I would be told, you would breathe better, have no sore joints, less wrinkles but the truth is probably that I would also be dead and dead men do not age!

Colin J.

You can still buy mercurachrome at the chemist. My husband always swore by it and when my children were small, they and their friends always wanted to have "Mrs. Mac's cura cream' on all their scratches and abrasions. i still have a bottle in the cupboard. Great stuff!!
Judy Mc