Published via Ecency

Power outage is something I grew up with as a lifestyle. I'm used to it that whenever I'm in a situation where I don't get to see electricity for weeks or months, I only complain a little and quietly move on with my life. After all, there's nothing I can do; I can't go and fix the problem myself or influence the people in power to do something about it.

That's why it's always funny to me when I see people complaining on social media about a power outage lasting just 2 to 3 days in their city. They must have been having electricity at a constant flow; that's why.

Meanwhile, I've seen enough 'shege' in darkness, and the worst of them all was a FULL YEAR WITHOUT ELECTRICITY.

Till today, I don't know the real story behind it because a lot of news was circulated...

It happened in my hometown, a rural, peaceful setting with many top people in the government house rooted in the village.

According to one of the things I heard, staffs from the electricity company were out one of those days to disconnect electricity from people who were yet to pay their bills. The people got angry at the staffs because they were disconnecting lights when they hadn't been distributing them regularly. The staffs were told to go back, but they refused, so it resulted in a fight, and at the end, the staffs were well beaten.

When the news got to the headquarters, they instantly disconnected our community's channel and requested apologies and payment for damage before they would return the electricity.
As stubborn as my community was, nobody agreed to embark on such an act because it'd turn to mockery and acceptance of failure.

That was it; nobody agreed to go, and the electricity company totally turned their back on us. Along the way, people started carting away cables and transformers because they weren't in use. Also, the remaining step down transformers got faulty due to long periods of no usage.

After like five months of beef between the community and the electricity company, the top political leaders went to solve the issue. When they reconnected the electricity, nothing worked because some step down transformers had been stolen and the ones available were damaged.

From that moment on, we knew that we'd signed into darkness for eternity because anything that involves heavy money for a project usually results in feet dragging.
The top politicians that tried to settle the issue washed off their hands and left for the city; after all, they don't base in the village.

Everyone saw the situation and went to improvise by getting the small Tiger Generator. That was how we stayed for a year or more without shouting "UP NEPA!". We lived like that to the extent that we forgot that there's something called NEPA. We were fine; there were no complaints when buying fuel to power the generator because everyone was doing that.
It was a village life; life is easy with the natural way of living; we don't store food in refrigerators; we make use of the charcoal iron to iron our clothes. Life was just normal.
Towards the end of the following year, news broke that they'd started working on the damaged transformers, and new ones were brought in as well. We were happy that we were going to see light again.

I can vividly remember when light was restored in mid-December and the town went into a party mood.

Up NEPA!!!!