The Power of Prepaid: Prepaid Power

It started with pay-as-you-go mobile phone lines, I believe, and seems to have caught on to domestic electric power. Here in Sudan, every household has an electric meter, just like any other country. Except that it doesn't just show how much power is consumed, but rather how much credit you still have left, before your electric power is cut off.

The way it works is that you go to the electricity place with your meter serial number, go to the lady behind the window and hand her your meter number and some money (however much you want loaded onto your meter). Electricity costs roughly US$ 0.15 per kilowatt hour. The lady will then hand you a receipt with a 16 digit code, which you just type into the keypad on the meter. Your credit will be automatically entered. Now you can enjoy air conditioning and hot water!

What's amazing about prepaid electricity (besides the fact of being an extremely efficient way of collecting electicity bills) is that it gives the user an unprecidented awareness of electricity consumption. I can tell you exactly how much my fridge consumes (about .12 kw/h) or how much my a/c consumes (2.30 kw/h) or even my water heater (1.7 kw/h). And I also know that light bulbs (especially the new power saving ones) consume next to nothing. So it's true what they claim.

Maybe prepay is the way!

Ants - my new friends

We used to fight all the time, ants and I. They would invade my space, and I'd kill them. That was pretty much our relationship until recently.

One day, I discovered that ants like Blueberry Muffin cereal. They had found my cereal box, and attacked it in their usual organized manner. Of course, they panicked when they noticed me, and started scrambling all over the place! I was squashing them as fast as I could, and tried hard to convince the ones inside the box to get out, so I could squash them too. Some did, but some refused to come out.

And that was my turning point. The Sudanese ants don't bite (like the Floridian fire ants). They just roam around the place, and try to get out of your way when you are around. They don't scream, or make a big drama scene when you accidentally step on one. They are also full of protein, so instead of talking them into getting out of my cereal box and squashing them, I just eat them. It's easyer for the both of us, and they don't even taste bad. In fact, they don't taste at all. So I can still enjoy the full flavour of my Blueberry Mufin cereal.

Besides, they reproduce more than rabbits! You couldn't possibly get rid of all of them.
So ants are now my new friends. Things are so much better between us now.