Live and die by umeme

Umeme:  Swahili word meaning “electricity”

Power outages are a near daily occurrence in Dar es Salaam.  It's always a strange feeling when you're watching TV in your air conditioned room and suddenly things become very quiet as everything powers off and it becomes stifling hot very quickly.  There are three options that you can take when this occurs:

1. Wait it out while sweating like you're in a sauna.  Try to remain calm and not let the heat+humidity combo get to you
2. If you're wealthy enough to afford your own generator, hope that it has enough juice to kick in.   The hum of electricity has never sounded so sweet
3. Escape to a place with good air conditioning and an even better generator – like a hotel

During one of our many umeme outages, we decided to take refuge at the uber fancy Kilimanjaro Hotel in Dar es Salaam where I ordered a bottle of Bitter Lemon.  It's a soda similar to Sprite, but less sweet and not at all bitter as its name would indicate.

It's interesting that in this city of nearly 3 million people, power outages are still a near daily occurrence.  It's like being in a time capsule from the 1970s.