Mount Livingstone Hotel

It’s not fancy. Nor should it have to be. The name is a cute nod to Mr. Livingstone, which I presume (pun not intended) is due to proximity to Zambia, nothing more. However, it should be noted that thus far, the power goes out for about 45 minutes to an hour twice nightly, with about 2 hours between each outage. That’s fine because that’s part of the deal of living in Africa. The odd thing is the response.

Each time this has happened – and that’s three nights running like clockwork – everyone acts surprised. Alternatively, I see a pattern. I see so much of a pattern that if I were running this place, I would have one of the staff standing next to the generator at 7:10PM each night. It would just make more sense to kick it on faster. I truly believe it takes 45 minutes for someone to receive the order to turn on the generator, to navigate darkness to find it in the area behind the hotel, to check if there’s enough diesel to operate, and to flip the switch.

That said, tonight I was transcribing my notes from farmer interviews into Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint slides (fun! consulting! hooray!) – and sat in total darkness with about 10 other people in the hotel’s café during both patterned power outages. The lights went out and my laptop screen served as the single luminary. It was sorta odd how conversation halted the entire black-out – the same stillness and hanging anticipation as during the “heads down, thumbs up” part of the 7Up elementary school classroom game. The room then sprung to life again when the power restored.

While odd, I can’t complain. Apparently in Dar, the main power supplier, Tenesco, is replacing two of the electrical power stations on the Peninsula. Instead of switching the supply required from those grids to others nearby or offering some other alternative, there will be frequent, if not constant, outages for the next 5-7 days in Dar. Nice job, Tenesco. That makes a lot of sense. It’s a good thing to be on the road!