Load-shedding woes for young adult planning to study at UJ next year

Cézanne Coetzee lives in Linden and is a young adult who is planning to enrol either for an honours degree in clinical psychology or postgraduate certificate in education. She said she is ‘leaning toward psychology more but will only make a definite decision in the coming weeks’.

She writes below about her frustration with load-shedding and how it is affecting her:

When we think of how load-shedding affects people, our minds immediately go to businesses but it also affects young adults.

Load-shedding Stage 6 was the worst, and I think we can all agree on that. However, there are also some positive outcomes that came from not having power for such long periods of time.

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I am an au pair, so for most of the day I am out and about driving my kids to and from their extramurals. As soon as we get home, lunch or a quick snack has to be prepared and it is a little difficult when there is no power to cook something. I can’t even pop some popcorn in the microwave.

While doing homework with the children, sometimes in the evening, we have to light a candle to see the worksheet.

When I am at home, I have limited time to do my washing, and on top of that have no electricity to do the washing.

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There are only a few hours in the day that I have power and generally for most of that I am at work. No power also means I cannot cook for myself so I have to order in most of the time, which costs me a lot of money.

Another way in which load- shedding has affected me is that because there is no Wi-Fi, I have to buy data. Buying data on a regular basis also tends to become more and more expensive.

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Load-shedding does cause major inconvenience. On the other hand, not having any electricity gives me an opportunity to spend more time with my family and my dog. I can also focus on doing things that I love – like painting or reading a book because there are no distractions.

My outlook on load-shedding is 50/50 – it can be a good thing because it forces us to be present in the moment but it can also arouse feelings of anger and anxiety.

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