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Category: Electricity (Page 2 of 3)

A vicious cycle

2017-12-22 / / 0 Comments
Heads up: This post was written for venting purpose only, it doesn’t provide any solutions or suggest them even remotely, and yes; it’s pretty damn depressing.

For the German version of this post, click here.  

I’m still living in Libya – using the term living loosely as usual -, and it seems like all my attempts to get out are failing miserably, so for what’s it worth, I’m sticking here for a while.

Everyday life

It always amazes me, how these people can survive on scraps, now matter how long I ponder this I can’t seem to wrap my head around it, and whoever is ruling seems to be pushing them to the limits, see how long they can survive without security, water, electricity, money and infra structure.
But somehow they are surviving. a bit like the walking dead – if you ever watched that show.
Word breaks out of a clash somewhere, huge lines at gas stations, that crisis ends and soon after a cooking gas crisis begins.
One shortage after the other, one made up crisis after the other. War breaks without notice in this hell hole. It defies reason and defies purpose. Yet that is how the system -and I use the term loosely- works.
If it rained like it would normally do, the streets would drown and mobility becomes very limited, usually combined with long power outages.

Photo credit: Safepath Group

Attempting to apply logic to these people is a sin, life is turning into a paradox inside of a paradox covered in camouflage textile.

The economy

No matter how hard they strike at them, they don’t respond. No matter how high the prices rise or how long the queues get to obtain basic needs, they just get lined up to get whatever for however.
It gets colder, the electricity goes off for days, it gets hotter the electricity also gets off for days on end, for an economy with so much inflation going on I’m surprised that there is a lack of money in the banks!
What are they doing then? Mostly stabbing each other in the back and trying to make the most of a bad situation, raising the prices of goods and services to squeeze every penny possible from people.

Others aren’t as affected by the situation like most

While most Libyans struggle to make ends meet, a few are living the life! Pictures of fancy homes, cars, and lavishing weddings surface on-line (thanks to facebook for this) to brag fortane and social status. With everything being covered in Nuttela chocolate (it’s a big deal here for some reason!).
Libyans always liked to brag in weddings and show that they have as much money as the next guy, even if they have to borrow money in order to do so, but that kind of splurging money is a whole new level. Is it a case of the lipstick effect?

The political scene in Libya

For a country that has a pair of each: Government, parliament, central bank. Everything is going down hill (assuming that the more the merrier of course)

  • Corruption eating away what’s left of Libya’s wealth.
  • No security
  • Local currency is non existent, and for something so rare it’s worthless.
  • No functioning bodies of governance.
  • No power / fuel to operate basic daily needs.

Governments change without the slights audit, in fact most of the former ministers and prime ministers are enjoying a peaceful retirement abroad, and no one checked if they embezzled money before leaving office, as if anyone one cared!
Laws are passed without anyone noticing and the only rule is the lack of rules!
How will a government work right if it’s not audited by the parliament.
How will the parliament asses any thing if the members fail to meet each time?!

The vicious cycle

Sadly most of the problems that are happening now happened before, some happened years ago like the liquidity issue and the high price of the US dollar on the black market, others happen each year like the water ponds caused by rain fall, if these issues are periodical, than they can be easily predicted and solved if there was a government of sort, but no! These issues will continue to occur because that’s how Libya functions.

Finally

Will it be fixed someday? Does anyone have a magic wand to make it all better? Chances are no one does. But if everyone does his part and takes responsibility for their action, then things could improve.

As a young man who grew up and lived all of his life in Libya, I don’t think that it will be fixed in my life time, and I’m not too excited about starting a family in these conditions and hope that my children would have it better.

I really hope that the people of this country wake up, and realize that what are they doing is drowning all of us, because we are on the same boat.

Total blackout in Tripoli, 200,000 views update

2017-01-15 / / 0 Comments
It’s no secret that the electricity in Libya is terrible, the company who is supposed to provide electricity to Libyans failed doing the one job it was supposed to do, the only thing they could do is make up excuses for failure..




Failure of the GECOL


In the last couple of years all they do is posting on Facebook saying how many hours of outage to expect, calculating Libya’s electric production and deficiency. These programmed power outages are meant to stabilize the power grid and to prevent blackouts. Many cities refuse programmed power cuts to stabilize the grid, so Tripoli takes most of the power cuts in the summer and in the winter, as if that wasn’t enough, some protesters closed a main gas line that fuels a major power station, threatening a blackout on most of Libya.

The blackout

We could tell this was different, usually the electricity goes off instantly, after 5 years of misery you start to get used to the outages, this outage on the other hand faded slowly, like a circle of darkness closing down on the center. As soon as the power went out communications said farewell, the dwindling Wimax service went down immediately and Libyana struggled to get a signal. Since it was night time, I decided to go up stairs and see the range of the outage, since controlled outages usually leave some places with power while turning off others, and there were some places that were “untouchable”, unaffected by the outages, so I looked for these first, but what I saw was completely different!!

I could see the stars! 

Stars usually disappear because of the city lights, but they were visible clearly that night (I haven’t seen stars this clear since the 2011 uprising when the power went off for 11 straight days). Darkness was all over the city, with some scattered spots of light here and there, I could tell right away that they were generators.


The nights stars are clearly visible thanks to the blackout


Why did it happen?

We learned that while trying to operate one of the power stations that was off, a huge power surge caused a blackout on most of Libya, even cities unaffected with the programmed power cuts, and while the power returned since dawn to most cities, Tripoli doesn’t have power,I’m using what’s left of the battery power to write these lines before the laptop goes into slumber.



Final words

The winter is still pretty cold, people are dying each day of cold and sickness in this cruel winter, when will this misery end?

On a brighter note, my blog reached 200,000 view, what a way to celebrate it, let’s put off a candle, or the whole country to celebrate!


Too soon?

Please share this post on social media, let everyone know what’s it like to live in Tripoli, and I use the word “live” loosely..

Winter in Tripoli with power cuts

2017-01-06 / / 0 Comments
The cold season is here, and with the cold season comes some unpleasant things.
Flu seems to be taking the population by storm, everybody is forced to get it at least once *sniff, and I’m no exception.


For the German version of this post, please check this post translated by Mrs. Angelika Gutsche

Electricity, again!

Another sad phenomenon that comes with winter is long power cuts, it’s funny that an oil producing country isn’t able to provide electricity to power up the capital, but that’s how it is.
Notice how I said the capital and not the country, other cities don’t have this issue, it’s just Tripoli.

Which is very stupid – if I’m allowed to rant here- because Tripoli has all the services: Banks, ministries, and communication companies, which means that when you cut the power off of Tripoli, you are shooting yourself in the foot, basically.

It gets colder every year!

This winter is very cold, I know that every winter seems to be the coldest ever, but this one is really cold!
And the lack of electricity means the lack of heating and hot water! Actually water in general, because the pumps that are used to lift the water are electric.

“Alternative” ways to keep warm

I pity those who were forced to leave their homes in this cold due to the on going conflict in Libya, it’s a terrible time to be outside, and I can’t imagine how does it feel not to have a place to go to, a harsh reminder to always be grateful of what you have, amen!

With the lack of electricity we had to improvise, we pulled an old grill and turned it into a makeshift fireplace, or what we call in Libya a “Kannon”, it uses coal for warming up the place.

كانون فحم ليبي
A makeshift fireplace, Kanoon.
Maybe thats the only good thing about the power cuts, having the families get together around the fire, the wind howling outside, telling old tales and sharing a good laugh as the fire clacks and hisses.

A fair warning tho, keeping the “Kannon” in a closed room may cause suffocation, and many people over the years died of carbon monoxide suffocation, how many died this year because of the cold and suffocation? Who knows? I know who to blame tho! #GECOL.

Sadly after writing this bit I learned that 7 people in the mountain city of Ghryan has been admitted to the hospital due to suffocation, and over 200 people with Pneumonia, seven of them who are seriously ill.  

Lack of house insulation

Another thing I have in mind is house insulation, we don’t have that, at all! Our houses are just blocks of cement that is extremely hot in the summer (we had the temperature go up to 50 degrees last summer) and really cold in the winter; the exact opposite of insulation!
Which means that we need to use electric heaters to keep the house warm, and those things consume electricity like hell!

A popular beverage makes a heroic comeback!

On a lighter subject, a popular winter drink has found it’s way into our kitchen, powdered millet, known in Libya and many Arab countries as “Sahleb.
كوب من السحلب
A glass of millet.
It’s a coffee like beverage made from: powdered millet, sugar, water and milk; served warm and it tastes very nice! It’s a good way to fight the cold.

Major hit to productivity

I am struggling to get things done, I’m yet to adapt to this lack of electricity arrangement, and trying to sync my sleep cycle with it failed badly!
So much for productivity, I feel like I went back to the 19 century (and watching Sherlock wherever we had power made this idea more plausible).
How am I supposed to get anything done on 7 hours of electricity a day, if these seven hours are the same hours I’m asleep at?

Final words

Here we are in Libya, surviving barely, struggling to make a living when everything seems to be standing against us, with no money or electricity; I am not sure how long this struggle is supposed to last, I’m positive that it won’t last very long (as if we can survive like this for much longer).

This was my weekly post, I hope you are feeling warm and fuzzy reading this, wherever you are.

Please tell me of how you and your families face this freezing cold and power cuts, and share this post on your social media for more engagement.

Living in madness, Tripoli under siege

2016-10-20 / / 0 Comments
Think of this as the second part of my post: Blogging from a war zone, things are getting worse by the day sadly, with no signs of relief.

For the German version of this post, please check this post translated by Mrs. Angelika Gutsche.

Political madness and UN involvement

The United nations claim it wants a political solution in Libya, two years later Libya is more divided than when the UN got involved! How many governments on the ground claim to have legitimacy?
All the UN does is feed migrants and issue worried statements, while feeding migrants is a good thing, Libyans are struggling to survive daily and worried statements won’t put food on the table.

Game of coups

The third coup in 2 and a half years happened a few days ago, and both governments are still in Tripoli claiming to be calling the shots and exchanging threats of prosecution and stressing that they have legitimacy while the other is a fraud! And that’s just in Tripoli!!
No one knows who is ruling the country or who is in control now.

Everyday life in Tripoli

How could the people survive without basic health care? With gangs killing and kidnapping people and looting everything in sight? With no money in the banks to draw? With electric power that goes out for up to 12 hours a day, everyday!

Living on the edge of an ongoing war

Every night there is a battle between militias over trivial things at times, and during the day checkpoints are scattered across Tripoli, you might get picked up for looking at them the wrong way or for simply being from an area they had a clash with last week!
Where you wind up from there is unknown, you will be lucky if they call for ransom, or you could wind up dead on a side road or a dumpster somewhere..

Money issues

It sadness me to see women and old men sitting on the floor in front of banks since dawn waiting for the possibility to draw some money (banks didn’t recevie money from the central bank for over 40 days) while being verbally and physically abused by militias.
To be honest I’m not doing much better than them, I too get my share of abuse and I was in the middle of a bank shooting -luckily no one got hurt that day- others weren’t so lucky.
As a result I wasn’t able to draw money out of my bank account for over 6 months.

Inflation

The Libyan dinar lost 73% of it’s value to foreign currency, this resulted in inflation of prices, some goods went up 200% and 300% of the original price! Only in Libya you see increases like this!
Most goods are bought by merchants with government support (government rate for the US dollar) and then sold back to the people at the black market rate (3 times as much as the government rate), and some locally produced goods like Tuna is exported without customs to neighboring countries to be exchanged in US dollars, later sold on the black market, which made these goods rare and in demand, which raised the prices even higher in return.
And yet no one bats an eye..

Schools won’t start this year

As a result of the current situation 1.2 million children in Libya are out of school, and the school year was delayed simply because they don’t have sufficient funds to begin the school year!

All that and no one bats an eye!!

And everybody is quite and living a normal life? That is an outrage!
I really don’t know how do these people do it? It’s either the most persistent group of people I have ever seen or they just succumbed to the fact that things are what they are and could potentially get much worse.
I realize that people are afraid of getting killed by militias as it happened several times before, it’s not the smartest thing in the world to confront drug crazed gun men with protests, but there are other options.

What about a city wide strike?

Just sit home and stop going to work for a few days, if everyone did this then we can make a change.
You will be surprised how fast every issue will be resolved, this is how you negotiate.
Let’s look at it that way: You are unhappy at your work, you aren’t getting paid, but you show up daily and work like everything is OK! What kind of logic is that?
If you keep being quite will will be butchered one by one and no one will bat an eye when its your turn..

The date of this post marks 5 years since the rebels killed col Gaddafi 5 years ago in Sirte, it gets you to think what a landslide the last 5 years has been, regardless of your political opinions.

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