More than a thousand words

A few years ago, I used to love taking pictures a lot and it's not even of just myself but mostly of random things. But these days, I seem to have lost interest in doing that and it's probably because my phone's camera quality isn't what it used to be as compared to when I just got the phone. I was thinking hard about what I would take a picture of earlier today and at first, I chose my laptop but after taking a picture of it, I didn't like the result because I used my camera's flash (it was cloudy over here all through the day) and the light reflected on the laptop's screen.

In the end, I decided to just take a picture of a gadget I got recently and a similar one I have been using for over 2 years; my power banks. They are like siblings; an older one of 2 years (the one on the left - oraimo) and the younger one that's barely a month old (itel powerbank). If you're in Nigeria, you will know why it is very important to own a powerbank, and if possible you should even own more than one. I have been using power banks since I started using a smartphone, which was back in 2014. I started small with 5000 mAh powerbanks, then moved to 10k mAh, then 27k before buying this one of 20k mAh.

The oraimo powerbank served me well for a while, but last year it started to get swollen and it started going off when it gets to 35%. It gradually got worse over time and right now, it goes off at 50%. I have had it in mind to buy a new one since late last year but I always postponed it until something happened earlier this month that pushed me to buy a new one. The electricity company in my city came to my house to disconnect the power supply because some of my neighbours were owed ridiculous electricity bills. I figured that the case would take a long time to be settled, so I quickly ordered a new power bank.

It took 3 days for it to be delivered to me and by then, the electricity company had reconnected the power at my house. But that doesn't mean the powerbank was useless, because it saved my phone from going off that same week, thanks to the very terrible power supply we have. I can't even imagine not owning a power bank and I'm even charging with it right now because there has been no power supply for over 9 hours now. I'm not even sure if we will be seeing it anytime soon, considering it rained heavily earlier today and it's normal over here not to get electricity once it rains heavily.

It's quite sad that Nigeria hasn't been able to achieve stable electricity for over 50 years and we seem to be getting worse daily. I mean, before now, we normally get over 15 hours of electricity in my neighbourhood daily but these days, we don't even get up to 10 hours. We don't even get at all on some days, and that's where my powerbanks become very useful. I have been using the new itel powerbank since I bought it and haven't had a reason to use the other one, but I'm pretty sure a day will come when I will end up using the two because, in this country, electricity is very unpredictable.

For now, these powerbanks are one of the very important things I own and I even rank them above my laptop. My phone comes first because I need it to make a living, then next are my powerbanks because without them, my phone would be suffering from low battery every time. There was actually a time when I didn't rely so much on my powerbank, that was over 5 years ago when my neighbourhood had a very stable power supply and sometimes it stayed for over a week without going off at all. The day Nigeria starts having very stable electricity like Ghana and some other African countries, maybe that's when I will no longer depend on powerbanks but for now, they are very, very important.

Thanks for reading