IRAQ: Baghdad’s eternal blackout
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It was one of the coldest days this winter. I arrived home from work and in a normal situation you would think that the work was done, but in this case, that wasn’t true. Taking a shower sitting in warm place and having a hot drink takes major work.
It has been more than three weeks since we have had any power from the national grid at our house. We don’t consider it that much of a difference because even in ‘normal’’ times we get just one hour of power during the day and another hour at night. We don’t bother anymore to ask about the reasons behind this or when the electricity might be fixed and come back.
Like most Iraqis, we have adapted to this situation since 2003. There are residents who installed medium-size generators covering around 25 houses that provide us about 10 hours a day. We pay $13 dollars per amp each month. The rest of the time, we run our own Chinese-made generators. These small generators break down a lot and use lots of fuel that costs us about $10 per day.
The big problem is that the generators don’t provide enough to run our room and water heaters. Everyday we face this problem of heating the house and water. We rely on kerosene heaters. The kerosene is expensive and dangerous, since our 20-month-old daughter who thinks the kerosene heater is a toy. But we got a $50 kerosene heater that’s child-proof, easing my concerns somewhat.
We are running three kerosene heaters in our medium-sized house: one in the living room and one in the bathroom for heating water and the third in the hallways. We use about 20 liters, more than 5 gallons, of kerosene a day. It isn’t very hard to get because the fuel tankers dragged by horses come around the neighborhood. In the winter, we spend $84 a week on kerosene.
During “normal” days when we have two hours from the national grid — which we haven’t had since the beginning of January — we run our two water heaters, so we can have a normal shower with hot water. So during the no power days, we heat the water on the kerosene heater in big cooking pots and then bathe the way people did in ancient times. This keeps the whole family busy. At night, we bundle up under thick blankets because of the cold. We can’t keep the kerosene heaters burning through the night because it’s a fire hazard. We are also worried about gas poisoning.
— Saif Rasheed in Baghdad.