Electricity and Cell Phone Service

I can't understand how I left this country almost a decade ago, came back, and we are still have electricity issues! I guess a lot doesn't always happen in a long time. It's mind bloggling. This past weekend, NEPA, or should I say Power Holdings Company of Nigeria (LOL, how appropriate), only gave us light for about 2 hours!! I know! Crazy! Sometimes people leave their generators running for days. It just doesn't make sense. Like someone said, in this country, you are your own Local Government i.e. you pretty much supply your own electricity, water, etc. Even if you have a generator, you still don't want them to "take the light", as we say, cos it's just stressful. You have to buy gas or diesel to power the generator and the sound produced by the generators is unpleasant especially when they run all night. Oh and they contribute to the pollution. Ah, Nigeria!

Man, I miss my contract cell phone service! T-Mobile! Where art thou! Ok, so, you can get a contract phone here but it's pretty expensive. The way cell phones work here is you purchase a sim card and then you "buy credit" as necessary. Once your credit expires, you can't make any phone calls!! Now, that's pretty scary! I know I used to complain about the 40 cents per minute that T-Mobile used to charge once you've exhausted your minutes for the month but man! what I would do to have that kind of security. Think about it now, if you run out of credit and need to make an urgent phone call, you can't! That's why you always have to have "emergency credit" in your wallet. Also, sometimes, if the "network is bad", you might not be able to "load" your credit. Geez louise! Now I understand why people have two or more phones! I used to think it was funny but it's quite necessary!