Expat Testimony: Coping with Pakistan’s Energy Crisis

With the average daily high in June at 103 degrees Fahrenheit, staying cool during frequent power outages takes some creativity. Living in Lahore, Pakistan from January 2006 to June 2009 has allowed me to experience and learn to cope with the country’s dramatically increasing energy crisis firsthand.

First Year in Pakistan: 2006

In the winter of 2006, there was hardly any load shedding, government controlled power cuts, at all. A friend advised me to purchase emergency lights that would turn on automatically when the power was cut. As the power almost never went out, I didn’t see any pressing need to follow her advice. As the heat rose in March and April I had my first experience with load shedding. On average there was only 1-2 hours of load shedding a day in the Defence Housing Authority, an upscale residential area, of Lahore.

When I moved outside of Defence into Gulberg I was in for another another revelation in Pakistan. Load shedding was more frequent outside of Defence. In Defence it was limited to thirty-minute blocks. In Gulberg it would go several times during a 24 hour period, and more than once we were without electricity for several hours at a time. It was then that I learned the art of semi-sleeping through power outages.

When there’s no electricity, it doesn’t just mean the lights are out. More imposing is the heat and humidity that starts to envelop you within minutes of the power cut. In order to catch a few fragmented hours of sleep I would jump into the cold shower with all my clothes on. Then I would lay in bed and sleep until the heat had sucked all the cool moisture from my body and woke me up drenched in sweat again. Then I’d repeat the cycle. During the summer of 2006 there were only a few instances I can remember where the electricity was out for the entire night.
As summer ended and temperatures decreased, load shedding became less common and things went back to normal. I still had not purchased any emergency lights.

Second Time in Pakistan: 2007-2009

My winter and spring of 2007 were spent back in the US, and my husband and I were welcomed back to Lahore in July by 110-degree heat. We moved into an upper portion in Defence where load shedding happened two or three times a day in thirty minute intervals. Electricity was rarely off for more than thirty minutes in the area where we lived. This pattern of load shedding did not seem to follow any particular schedule but was bearable.

Dramatic changes hit as winter moved into spring of 2008. Suddenly we had load-shedding periods of one-hour long six to eight separate times in a day in the Defence area. Other areas of Lahore were hit worse by the realization that Pakistan is far short of producing enough energy for the country’s burgeoning needs. The area where my maid lives suffers from power shortages for the entire night almost every night of the week. After going through dozens of candles, I finally gave in and bought some emergency lights.

How Lack of Electricity Affected Almost Every Aspect of Daily Life

Until we left in June 2009, I had to completely re-arrange my schedule. It was now governed by the ever-changing load-shedding schedules. I woke up when the buzz of generators prevented me from falling back asleep. I cooked meals when there was no power, as I figured I’ll be hot in the kitchen no matter when it is.

I grocery shopped during load shedding so I could take advantage of the big chain’s generator powered air conditioners. I scheduled my classes and Urdu lessons so I can be somewhere else when there’s no power at my house. My Urdu lesson started when the power came on at my teacher’s house. When the AC shut off and the fan started buzzing with UPS power; then I knew it was time to leave. We didn’t need to consult our watches.

I waited until my lights went out to go to the bank or go visit a friend on a different load shedding schedule than me. Or better yet, one with a generator or a UPS so they had an unlimited supply of power for their fans. I left for work forty-five minutes early sometimes since I couldn’t bear the thought of languishing in the heat without power in our home office.

Lunch and dinner dates were not scheduled without considering the power situation. Finally, I got ready for bed about an hour before load shedding so that I could be unconscious before the drone of the neighborhood’s industrial-size generators filled the humid night air.

Aside from re-arranging my daily schedule to deal with load shedding, many other areas of my life were affected by the worsening energy situation. Since I could never count on there being electricity for any 24-hour period, I had to make all of my class materials days or weeks ahead of time. If I was putting together any last-minute activities or notes, I needed to make sure I printed them before the onset of the next load shedding.

An Excuse for Everything and a Word for the Future

Load shedding also quickly became the most common excuse as to why things were not done on time. After I’d left my clothes for a week at the tailor, they wouldn’t be finished when I go to pick them up.

“Why?” I would ask, only to hear the lame excuse of, “Electricity was out.”

I doubted that it was out for the entire week 24 hours a day, especially considering the tailor’s shop is only a five-minute drive from my house. An eighth grader even tried this one on me,

“Why didn’t you ask a friend for the assignment?”

“The electricity was gone, and so I couldn’t call.”

“Don’t you have a mobile phone? And a landline? Neither of those require electricity.”

“Oh…yeah. I guess that wasn’t a good excuse.”

Although you may not be feeling the effects of dwindling energy supplies yet, be prepared for it to hit on a global level. Living with wide scale load shedding calls for the acceptance that lack of energy will dominate your daily decisions and significantly alter the way any given society functions as a whole. Investing in devices like emergency lights, UPS, and generators is always better to be done before the need and the demand rises. In Pakistan, people are saying that the national energy situation will be in dire straits until 2015. My question is: after 2015 will it get better or only worse?

Those emergency lights proved to be one of our best investments.