COME, YE DISCONSOLATE

Thomas Moore knew well how to express pathos in poetic terms back there in the late 1700-1800s. Disconsolate: cast down in spirit, utterly dejected. Certainly, there are days here in modern Zimbabwe when we’re more closely akin to the 18th than 21st century!

The hymn Come, Ye Disconsolate popped into my mind this week on the fourth day of ZESA (Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority) cuts, 12 hours or more per day. We sleep with a fan above our bed. Monday it eases into a full stop at 6 a.m.; Tuesday and Wednesday at 5:17 a.m.; and Thursday at 5:21 a.m. Twelve to fourteen hours later ZESA switches on again. And we are charged for this disruptive service a monthly fee usually exceeding $80 U.S.

Thursday morning hit me hard. [ZESA off at 9 a.m. and on again at 3 p.m. on Friday. On all day Saturday until 5 to 7 p.m., and now it’s Sunday morning and who knows what’s in store, except over 20 people over after church for a braai (barbeque)]. The monotony of four days in a row with at least 12 hours without ZESA.

So, I am feeling a bit down but we broke our fourth day routine with a morning at church looking at the tasks needed doing to spruce up the church. It is fun and a parade of ideas flow through our conversation. Friday we take it all in stride, and Saturday we are in the kitchen, both of us busy; me with pork chops and chili, and Jim with coleslaw and lickey stickey, the poor man’s cake made without eggs. I am happy with pork chops for supper and two more double servings in the freezer, and at least three and maybe four meals with chili, also in the freezer. ZESA goes off just as Jim finishes his kitchen work for the braai.

After four years of an erratic schedule with ZESA we are quite relaxed with taking it as it comes and goes. In the early months we would get quite worked up and irritable. It’s the not knowing that’s the most problematic. If you’re caught with half-done bread in the breadmaker, for example. We do have a propane stove and Jim has successfully transferred cakes in midstream.

Most of our ZESA cuts are daytime, which I find easier to live with than the evening hours. At first they were mostly at night, and we invested in those portable fluorescent lights that had to be charged up. We didn’t have much success with these after the first month or so. They went downhill from several hours of light to less than a half hour and less. Chinese made, you know.

So, then we graduated to invertors, now part of our lounge décor. A little table with an invertor, battery charger and battery. For a couple of years several of us in church would haul our invertors and batteries back and forth, because when ZESA is off we can’t use all our musical instruments and the sound desk. Now, thanks to some good friends, we do have a small generator.

The lengthy times of no ZESA cuts into communication with folks overseas. No ZESA means no computer. No computer means no email, even writing email notes. So, we don’t keep up with our correspondence like we should.

Why no ZESA? The cuts began as loadshedding; everyone does with less so the wheat farmers can irrigate their fields. But it’s much more than that. Other culprits include maintenance and the necessary expansion to keep up with population growth. During our hyperinflation years money wasn’t available to purchase and replace parts. And planning ahead or anticipating growth is more of a Western concept than Third World. The natural resources are here, including abundant coal and the Zambezi River. One of these days we’ll be on track again, but it may take some years. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe imports up to half its electricity.

Sorry about the melodramatic disconsolate; it was just a brief twinge. Really, it’s something I can live with. Some will ask why we stay and put up with such nonsense. The answer is so simple and brings with it contentment. God is here, and this is where He wants us to be. We all live with irregularities of some kind and an unstable ZESA may be a lot more tolerable than what other people face. But don’t you like the way Thomas Moore ended the first verse of his hymn: Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.