Energy Woes Pt 2

In the past few days, I've started to see a lot of differences in how much energy I consume versus how much my Ugandan counterparts consumer. In another idea from Tom Friedman’s book, he talks about how people around the world aspire to live the “American lifestyle.” The expansion of the global middle class is a testament to that. The issue is, Americans use more energy per person than any other country on the globe.

As an American in a country with an energy shortage, I’ve grown acutely aware of how much electricity I use. I have to charge my laptop, my iPhone if I want to listen to music and call my parents, my lantern, my Ugandan phone, my camera, etc etc etc. I can’t think about how my host family’s electricity bill is going to go up because of me.

I’ve also realized how much stuff I have. My host mother told me that I had the most bags out of any intern she had ever seen. Did I really need to take my iPad with me? Did I really need to take all these clothes? It’s become my new goal to reduce my bags from three down to two, so hopefully I won’t struggle on my way home!

Energy Woes

While I've been in Uganda, I've been trying to chisel my way through Tom Friedman's latest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded. I've always been following his concepts, but even more interestingly, I see a lot of what he's talking about here in Uganda.

One of his main ideas is that world population is rising, and so is the world's middle class. Along with the rising middle class is a rising demand for electricity - that fossil fuels just can't provide. He calls it energy poverty, or energy haves and have-nots. Here in Uganda, one of the main challenges in doing business is lack of energy infrastructure. In my town of Jinja, the main electricity generator for the country is the Owen Falls Dam, but even here we experience blackouts. Yesterday, we had a rolling blackout that lasted from 10 in the morning until late at night, and the electricity is still out at my work!

There is even electricity rationing due to high levels of demand. While something like this would be unthinkable in the United States, this the norm here. When Laura and I arrived in Entebbe Airport our first day here, we sat down in a cafe area to wait for our site team to pick us up. As we were sitting, the lights flickered and the power went out twice - in the national airport.