15/11/12

Monday afternoon I arrived at the electricity company at 3:10pm to buy more electricity for our house. The man stuck his head in the door then turned back to me, “sorry, we’re closed.” “But I thought you closed at 3:30pm” I said. He then explained to me that yes they do. Unfortunately for me, they close the selling window at 3pm, then they actually close up and go home at 3:30pm. “So you’re going to be here for the next 20 minutes but you won’t sell me electricity?” I asked him. “Yes.” This country drives me crazy sometimes.


I was with a Peace Corps driver and, since he knew I was leaving town the following day, he offered to buy it for us. I didn’t want to trouble him, so I told him not to worry about it, I would just buy some Thursday. Stupid. This morning I went to buy electricity, but their system is down. And there are currently riots happening in Maputo city due to increased chapa prices, so it seems that the whole city has been temporarily shut down, thus the chances of anything getting fixed out here are extremely low. I was considering going into Maputo tomorrow to run some errands, so I could also buy electricity while there. But I found out this morning that a travel ban has been placed on Maputo, due to the riots, so I can’t do that. I have tried talking to some Peace Corps staff who live in Maputo to see if any of them could buy us electricity and text us the number (to punch into the box on our house), but their travel around the city is also quite limited, so we are trying to find someone who is already in that part of town. Oh the joys of Mozambique.