Loadshedding And Then Some

South Africa has this ridiculous system called loadshedding in which the state monopoly power provider switches the electricity off at various points around the country for 2 hours at a time. 

Somehow they think it's all made more acceptable and manageable by having an actual schedule for this nonsense, but this schedule is adaptive depending on which particular stage of loadshedding we happen to be enjoying.

Loadshedding Corner

Welcome to Loadshedding Corner.

Yes, we actually have a corner of the house dedicated to just keeping various items charged and running for  when the power goes off.

So far in 2023 we haven't had a single day without loadshedding, and recently we seem to have graduated from mostly being in Stages 1 & 2 to mostly being in Stages 5 & 6 which often means we get to enjoy four hours of uninterrupted blackouts at a time.

Take That Loadshedding!

Loadshedding celebrates its 15th birthday this October.

Yes, this country has been rolling out planned energy blackouts for fifteen years because Eskom the state owned utility is too incompetent and the ruling ANC are too corrupt to get their act together and actually resolve the issues. The main issue being the $24bn+ that have been stolen by those in power!

Not Defeated

It was great to see The Gathering's Homework Club continue through loadshedding on Thursday for the first time ever, and it's a blessing knowing that we no longer have to turn the kids away just because the electricity is off.

Sadly only three of the kids got the message for this week, but word is out and so the next time loadshedding is scheduled for when a Homework Club is happening the kids know that we'll be ready and waiting to serve them.

Take That Loadshedding! Pt 2

In our seemingly never ending quest to defeat the inconvenience of loadshedding we are always looking for ways to keep the power on so as not to interrupt our Homework Club and other church activities that are reliant upon a decent internet connection.

So it's great to have a mini UPS which can power the modem and router for our fibre connection meaning we can stay connected in spite of Eskom's dastardly tricks in trying to defeat us.

Loadshedding

Well that was some welcome home!

During my week in Blighty our putative electricity supplier decided to ramp up loadshedding from Stage 4 to stage 6.

What this means is that six areas in the Cape Town municipality are off at the same time but rather than being off for the usual two hours we get the joy of being off for four hours at a time. Deep joy!

Loadshedding Soup Kitchen

After the joy of our three Christmas Specials at The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen, it's great to be back to the joy of our normal Soup Kitchen, replete with loadshedding.

Butternut is back in season locally, so it was a case of prepping and chopping 18kgs of them to make one hundred litres of delicious home-made soup.

Desperate For Power

Our power situation doesn't improve. 

We had loadshedding until 4am this morning followed by scheduled maintenance from 6am until 4pm which stretched out 'til 5.30pm. The only bright spot in this was that our scheduled loadshedding from 6pm was skipped this evening.

Loadshedding Soup Kitchen

It seems so normal these days to just get on with life regardless of whether we have electricity or not, and we've certainly learnt to make a plan for those all too frequent occasions when the power is switched off.

On Thursday it was the turn of The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen to once again enjoy the inconvenience of loadshedding.

Cracking On

With loadshedding now in its 16th year and showing no signs of going anywhere anytime soon, it was time to make a plan to ensure life can go on (see Take That Loadshedding!).

So yesterday for the first time we were able to crack on with The Gathering's Homework Club through the scheduled two hour blackout thanks to our mini inverter which not only charged the tablets but then kept the router and wifi running for the 2½ hours for which the electricity was off.

I Like To ride My Bicycle

After the theft of Joel's bicycle we had a further theft in which my bike was nicked along with our gas bottle. Sadly we only noticed a little while after the event when we wanted to boil the kettle during loadshedding.

Thanks to a rather lovely blessing we were able to replace Joel's bike a while ago, but we'd been waiting to replace mine, mainly due to cost.

Festive Soup Kitchen #1

Sadly The Gathering have had to shelve plans for our annual Soup Kitchen Christmas Lunch this year. The main reason for doing so is simply one of logistics, as it would be beyond our resources to cater for and accommodate all of our regulars, which would lead to some frustration and disappointment, which we would rather avoid.

Next year when The Gathering is meeting in the main hall it will be a different ball game, but sadly we need to pass on it this year.

Farewell Dad

Today we said farewell to Dad/Brian/Grandad and it was hard to do so from such a long way away, but that's one of the harsh realities of these strange times.

Rev Mandy from St. George's did a great job in leading the service at the crematorium and spoke so well about him and his life with genuine grace & wisdom. Thank you Mandy!

We had to decamp over to The Gathering's home in order to live stream the service given that loadshedding was due to begin at 12pm at home and it was lovely to be joined by our dear friend Annatjie.

We did have the privilege of recording a video tribute by Paula and a Bible reading by Dean, so though we were over 6000 miles away we were there in spirit as well as the live stream.

Fetching Water

The story of The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen is a long and varied one, and over the eight years that we've been running it, we have had some interesting issues and obstacles to deal with and overcome.

Today's particular obstacle was perhaps the strangest to overcome... 

The water in Firgrove had been off since 6pm the previous night and it still wasn't on at 11am when I needed 100 litres of water to get ready making the soup.

Defeated

By the time our latest bout of Stage 6 loadshedding had finished we had exhausted five inverters of varying capacities, and had to declare a defeat.

Eskom, you won this round!

Homework Club

We are thrilled that The Gathering's Homework Club has restarted. 

It's actually in its second week of the new school year and already we're full with quite a long waiting list.

We also have quite a lot of Gr7s from the local primary school asking to join so we are going to have to look at ways of accommodating them too. What a brilliant problem to have!