Running powerless and Paying for it

Running powerless and Paying for it

I am now used to staying without electric power.  The power fails every other day, albeit for short duration.  However, the power failure has progressively become more prolonged since the national power provider, KPLC, decided to get themselves into a scandal that was compounded with that nearly national power blackout of mid-January.

It is for this reason that I was not surprised at all when there was no power in my house last Thursday evening.  However, this was the ‘discriminative’ type, where some houses in the two-storey apartment have power, while others do not.  It is technically called a phase failure, where one or two of the three power cables becomes faulty.  This means only the houses connected to the faulty line fail to get power while the rest enjoy the goodness of electricity.

The phase failure has been a common occurrence in that plot.  I am not sure if it is only my pad that gets hit, but I can confirm that I tend to feel so, though I have no data to back my feeling.  I only see the times when I am in the dark while the rest of the houses are lit.  Maybe others are equally affected, but I do not know.

I was therefore quite OK with the power fail in my house despite the others houses having power.  I went to bed in the dark and surprisingly woke up in the dark the next morning, Friday.  That was strange.  I am used to such a phase failure being resolved by the next morning.  This one had not been resolved almost twelve hours later.  I left for duty dejected with lots of curses to the power provider, albeit with some hope that the evening would bring in some good tidings.

I was a bit surprised when I came back home around nine in the evening Friday to still find the house dark.  This prolonged power fail was surely setting a wrong record for the power provider.  I was just glad that I did not have a refrigeration equipment, otherwise I would be in a worse situation.  I was however not very surprised, yes, not very surprised.  The power company was capable of anything!  What else can you say of a company that allows a row of high voltage power pylons to collapse to the ground causing that national blackout?  And to blame scrap metal vandals for that national disaster is surely stretching it!

Anyway, I went to bed for a second night with lots of bad feelings for the power company.  I was however convinced that they surely would resolve the phase failure by morning.  Believe it or not, I woke up on Saturday with no power for a third day running!  Something had to give.

I called the caretaker to just confirm that many of us were suffering the power fail.  She usually gets to know of such, and on some occasions, I have heard her over my earshot talking about the failure and stating to whoever that she had called Kenya Power about it.

The caretaker was surprised that I did not have power, since there was no power problem at all in the last week.  Her first question was, “Umelipa kweli?”

I had not even imagined that I could be asked that question.  I had not even thought that the power fail could be a power cut.  I had not even thought of thinking along these lines.  I did not even want to take that line of thinking on this Saturday morning.

Of course I had paid, in advance.  I pay the bill on the date of issuance of the bill, two weeks before the due date.  I even I have a budget tracker that ensures that the power bill item remains glowing on the list until it is paid and ticked off.

“Kuna watu wa pawa walikuja kukata stima juzi, lazima walikata yako.  Kweli ulilipa?,” she reconfirmed.

I started to even doubt whether I had really paid up that bill.  Did the Njanuary month of 60-days get into me to the extent of not remembering to pay?  Did my budget tracker do a number on me?  Was it the December bill that I actually did pay and not this one?  I asked myself quite some questions, even as I spoke on phone.

I soon sent a query to the 977 short message code so that Kenya Power can check the bill against my meter.  And as sure as the earth is flat, I soon got a response that I had all outstanding bills and my account was reading -0.00.

“Phew!,” I exhaled even as I got my sanity back.  I would soon send the same confirmation to the caretaker, since she was in total disbelief herself, that I had paid yet my power had been disconnected.  In fact after getting that message we talked once more on phone and she even used the word “mlevi” while describing whoever was involved.

At that point I had the option of waiting until Monday to sort it out with the power company that made the mistake, hence add another 2 dark days to my bill, or go plan B.  That is when the caretaker told me that she knows someone who knows someone that knows another person who is authorized to reconnect erroneously disconnected meters, “lakini yeye hurudisha stima na thao,” she concluded casually.

“For crying out loud!,” I almost cried out loud!

My last bill was only four hundred shillings and I usually pay about five hundred shillings monthly for that power.  Now I have to pay up double that amount for reconnection caused by a mistake that is not mine!

Long story short, I got my power back the same evening, while my MPESA balance was seriously depleted.  Sometimes you have to do what you have to do, and just pay to Caesar what is his.  Maybe there is even a cartel to disconnect incorrect meters so that we pay up this reconnection fee ‘on the side’.

WWB, the Coach, Nairobi, Kenya, Feb. 8, 2022

Running into a booster in the wrong right arm

Running into a booster in the wrong right arm

It is exactly one week since this happened.  I have tried to avoid telling the story so that I avoid having egg on my face, but the story is just too compelling to let go, so here goes…

Last week on such a Wednesday I knew that I would be getting a corona booster vaccination shot.  This had been made optional to the staff though it has been ‘highly recommended’ provided one had met the boosting conditions.  These conditions were few – basically the last full vaccination shot must have been 6-months prior.  My last one was in July, so I was qualified.  Being a vaccination day, there was no discrimination on whether one was getting a first, second or booster.  It is only the booster that had that stringent 6-month caveat.

Coincidentally, and for purposes of raking in the numbers, we also had a blood/serological camp, where anyone could volunteer to provide blood sample for purposes of testing their antibody response to corona.  Such tests would then confirm prior exposure to the virus and even details as to the effectiveness of the vaccine on the body, including whether the activeness of the vaccine (N-protein levels) was waning over time.

The first twist to this combined camp was that those already vaccinated on that day could not undergo the serology.  That meant that serology had to come first before the vaccination.  I saw a red light just there on how these two camps that were set at the same location would be managed.  Some were coming for one of the two camps, while other staff were coming for both.  The vaccination was a morning only affair, while the blood thing was full day.  The serology involves being taken through a ten-minute questionnaire session, while the vaccination was just a walk-in-walk-out setting.  This combined camp was going to challenge the very core of logistics, patience and perseverance.

I had to do careful calculations to ensure that I attended both.  I needed the blood works since I had travelled to Western Kenya in December and my exposure level to the population in the travels and while there was a bit higher than I would usually encounter.  I could have been exposed to the virus in that sojourn, though I had not felt the effects at all at any point in time.  The closest that I got to feeling ‘virused’ was when I got a chocking cough for about five minutes around January 10, a week after I had come back to the city.  This episode was quickly forgotten and there has never been any other feeling to make be believe I have or have had corona.  But you never know, the double dose of Asta-Zeneca has maybe been my saving grace!  I needed the bloodwork, I told you! The results of previous such works had confirmed no exposure since I took the first such test in July.

I was also a volunteer at the vaccination camp even as I sought this serology thing.  That meant that I had to first deal with the bloodwork then be free to assist in pre-registration of those coming for the vaccinations, then update their records thereafter.  I knew that this day would be different and even easier to manage.  Afterall, I was confident that the online pre-registration of those being vaccinated would make the process seamless.  However, that is not what happened…..

I stayed for over 30-minutes at the serology tent, where they were asking me for the fifth time in monthly intervals the selfsame questions that they had asked before.  Why can’t they develop an online form where I can answer these questions for myself?  Do they trust the interviewer more than the interviewee?

“Have you travelled out of Nairobi for the last one month?”

“Yes”

“Where to?”

I answered

“For how long?”

I answered.

“How many people on average did you interact with?”

For crying out loud!  When will private life become private?

Anyway, l eventually got through and donated my blood for science.  It was just about nine-thirty.  The queue to the serology tent was already long.  The three tents housing those coming for vaccination were also full.  I also had to get myself in the vaccination booth first, if I was to eventually take a seat and do the vaccinee registrations that was soon going to hit us, judging by the number of those seated and waiting.

I got into the vaccination booth and found the nurse and the data person taking tea.  They were gearing up to start.  We are used to having two nurses during such events.  Today there was only one.  I know that the vaccination throughput is usually fast when the process starts, but having only one nurse for this already big population was an overkill.

“I want to the first person getting the shot so that I can move on with registration work,” I told the lady and gent at the tea table.  Those were faces that I had met in the past vaccination camps.  We had some level of familiarity.

“Let me finish the tea, then we can start,” the lady responded, “I just have to mix the vaccines first.”

New info!  The mixing.  Or whatever that meant.  In another five minutes the mix was done, after I had indicated that I was a double AZ vaccinee, to which I she told me that Pfizer Biontech was the boost that I was to get as recommended by the GOK MOH.

I sat next to the vaccination kits on the table spaced at the middle of the booth.  I could see the tea table at the extreme end of the tent.  On my left was the exit position of this square booth.  I had already removed my coat as I knew the procedure as it has become.  I unrolled the sleeve and looked aside as I momentarily felt a prick on the upper arm, then a pressing of a cotton swab on the same place.  The swab was immediately removed and thrown into a medical bin, together with the ‘sharps’ of the syringe and associated items.

“Done, we are now ready to start, you may call them in,” she gestured me out.

I put back my coat and got my laptop from the side table in that booth and walked out.  I left the queue management to another volunteer as I quickly went to one of the four big tents to setup my computer station.  I knew that very soon we would be having an influx of those already vaccinated and in need of an update on the computer system.

I logged into the system and was ready to get the ball rolling.  Obeying the principles of separation of duties, I asked one of my three colleagues to update my vaccination record on her system, promising to return the favour when her time came.

“Your ID number?”

I told her on the next desk

“The vaccination taken?”

“Pfizer”

“Let me see, there are three listed, which one was it?”

I remember being careful to confirm the vaccine batch number when I finished my shot.  The batch would usually be the same for the whole camp setup of the day.

“The middle one on the list, the one starting with N”

“Oh, I see,” she responded, “How about body temperature?”

I remembered that figure from the blood tent, where you also get your vitals taken.

“Done!”

I knew that very soon I would be the one asking people these questions, and it did not take long, since I was soon registering the first, and second and third… and tenth, and eleventh… and thirtieth, and thirty-first… and sixtieth vaccinee on the system.  They were just so many coming for post-registration.  The pre-registration done that we had already filled in two days prior having turned out to be a non-starter hoax!  What a waste of our computing resources and time!  It remained a busy day until at some point I was updating the CEO himself on the system having taking his booster.

We took a lunch break and wrapped up with the last ten or so after the lunch break, upon which time the nurses, who were now two, and the data person from the MOH closed camp and left.  The serology camp continued in the afternoon though our data entry team had already left the ghost tents in the middle of the field.  We had taken one step towards slaying corona, despite the worldwide numbers* being 384M and 5.7M deaths, with Kenyan numbers being 321,671 and 5,593 respectively.

*source: worldometers

I woke up the next day with a pain on my right top arm, just near the shoulder.  I could feel the unmistakable sensation of a needle prick on that right arm.

“Oh emm geee!,” I woke up shouting to myself.  I had been vaccinated on the wrong hand!

WWB, the Coach, Nairobi, Kenya, Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022