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Lessons load shedding taught me

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When load shedding was still quite new to everyone and the schedules were poorly communicated, I came home from a long day at university at about 18:00 and tried to turn on my laptop.

It was evident that my laptop had no battery power. With a lot of work to do, I plugged it in and walked to the kitchen to eat supper when all of a sudden the power went off.

My family and I gave a sigh and spent 2 hours (complaining) in darkness until my brother came home at about 20:00 (we were expecting the power to come on soon) and asked why we were sitting in complete darkness.

We told him we have load shedding. My brother looked puzzled and said 'well the rest of the neighbourhood seems to still have power'. After some investigating by my brother, it seemed my laptop charger had tripped the power.

My neighbours found this story quite funny but my family not so much because we had so much work to do. - Liana

So, there I was on a Sunday after waiting for my eggs to boil on the hot plate when load shedding kicked in unexpectedly.

Sad for a moment wondering what I was going to do, my best friend called inviting me over for dinner. Off I went, merrily anticipating a warm cooked meal.

I socialised for hours, only to return home close to midnight - and disaster had struck! I forgot to switch off the hot plate after load shedding had struck, causing my eggs to cook away and burn atop the plate.

Smoke billowed everywhere and there I was, opening all of the windows and doors in the early hours of the morning to rid the house of the smell.

Needless to say, I've learnt my lesson! Switch off EVERYTHING when its lights out! – Fazielah

One evening when load shedding kicked in, we happened to have run out of candles so we had to use our cell phones as a torch. I was in the kitchen in the process of trying to cook on the gas cooker and was looking for ingredients in the fridge.

I made the dinner, we ate and I thought it was a good time to call my mom, seeing that there wasn't much to do. As it turned out, I couldn't find my cell phone anywhere and it was quite frustrating, because there was such little light as it was.

I was tripping over things, everywhere I went. I then asked my hubby to call my phone from his cell phone. I couldn't figure out where the ringtone was coming from.

To my embarrassment, I found out that the ringtone was coming from the fridge. I must have placed it in the fridge when I was looking for ingredients for the dinner. - Kerry
 

These articles was written by a reader in response to the Spindel laundry dryer competition.

Want to read more load shedding stories? Check these out:

I found a mushroom in my laundry bag and other load shedding horror stories

I accidentally scared my neighbour's kid and other load shedding stories

"I'm too grumpy to deal with this" and other load shedding complaints 

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