First impartation under this title is I’m going to talk about the 4th of September Darkness, over 12 hours plus of no power and consequently no water as almost all aspect of life seized, and the worst of all, no one knows what is happening, lots of rumours and confusion, confusion our enemy best weapon! My confusion went to these extremes:
1) We are at war with terrorism. –I would say the only country clearly fights terror- So is it
a) A police attack on some terrorist cell and to keep the secrecy imposed a general blackout?
b) Some terrorists attack blown out our power stations
c) What else a counter revolution to Egyptian will and desire of freedom & dignity?
Thanks God I trust the Egyptian Army and above all the wisdom and smartness of their leadership, -I’ll come back to this point later- so all of the above undocumented thought are nothing but my sick imagination, so where the truth?
Let aside hospitals and the problems that rise to a kidney patient under cleaning device to revive his essentials kidney function then power goes off not knowing even to which level the cleaning reached, what about someone got locked inside the lift? Old style houses and lifts where setup in an open area if it happens the life malfunctioned you could just open the door and if between two levels just jump, or clime down or up nowadays if lucky enough to be able to manually open the door –most doors now function electronically so not a chance to open the door- you will find a wall unless you were lucky and the lift stopped close enough to a level you can crawl out of the lift! I recall the famous Egyptian movie its world by world tile translation was: - Between Sky and Earth...
In this blackout all aspect of life stop, you have no Air Condition or even a Fan in this summer hot weather you start sweating and no water to wash out this sweat, you can no more sleep, you have no TV, ok then let us kill time and try to see what is going on in the Internet, oh no Internet without power is not possible, even the Wi-Fi depends on power supplied by amplifiers working with electrical power! Your best laptop batteries lasts 2 hours they were ½ way empty from a previous power outage so now they are DIED! Your mobile soon will need recharging how the hell without power?
I was lucky enough to go in an open air area thinking of the poor guys that had to report to work but locked inside the subway of the metro they can open the metro’s doors but still inside the tube to way out! What a mess, the worst of all to see the poor employee collector of power bills having to work and go ask people for their bill in this blackout I wanted to safe guard his I myself did curse him when he come to collect my bill right after a power outage I was furious and needed to see anyone to bite, but soon I cooled down and apologised to him knowing he was just an employee doing his job!
Thanks God time goes on and blackout is over 12+ hours some places extended to almost 18-20 hours, needless to say in a hot summer day refrigerators without power become almost ovens and forget about delicate food that needs to stay fresh! Forget about some cold water after a long hot day in the open air, so only one thing to do go Facebook curse the Minister of power and the whole ministry then try TV and Internet to see what really happened and how?
Is anger the solution?
I noticed I was not the only one angry from that black out, different reasons for this anger but the source was one that extended blackout including lots of parts of the country that never happened before since long very long time ago; but is this anger going to erase what had happen or we need to extract facts learn lessons and correct mistakes?
Some requested to punish –including myself- the responsible of this outage, the majority is urging this punishment, and news spread the minister of power resigned and his resignation was refused!
To me with all due respect:- He was a failure, however, reconsidering that power problems were a long time ago clear and present problem that requires lot of technical and financial support that every cabinet in the government put off since ex-president Mubarak! So this is not a current problem of the current government but an all time problem that the current government decided to resolve! Accumulated result of a chronic problem become more and more complicated to resolve, and a person in this current situation where everyone fed up with all kind of problems have no more patience needs real man, courage and power of will, accepting this responsibility means that person is a real Egyptian, my deepest apology to Dr. Ahmed he is really doing his best considering our all time existing problems!
Technically speaking
Watching the talk shows on Sada El Balad, and CBC Extra and other Egyptian channels experts analysing what happen and that we cannot just pull out reports from computers and point out this is guilty, and as a technician myself who did build at a point of time my own very powerful tower computer that over time proved to be weakest than this laptop I’m using to type in this article; Yes, unexpected events might occur at all time even expected ones could bring down your computer, laptop or mobile and tablet! Not saying the Government is a tablet, just making an example or to be more precise let me re-iterate this example to get clearer and clearer:-
King Farouk-R.I.P.- or upon his era a nice huge building was built for the royal family, royal houses were many levels and rooms specious for say 12-15 persons to live including servants cook and his family and so on! Best estimate this building could host easily 100 person, R.I.P. ex-president Nasser nationalized this building and gave it to a 100 poor families, those families over time gave birth to 10 new babies each family that is 100x10=1000 but this building supplies from electricity to water and drains were initially designed for a family a royal family that in a party could host guests up to 100 not 1000! Some might propose to extend the capacity at no time however mean time those 1000 persons become 2000 or even 10,000 taking in consideration this is a mathematical sequence increases really fast!
Another genius will say let us re-build this old building to be a really all inclusive multipurpose mole with 10-20 thousand apartments, great but mean time where this 2000 person go or live?
Egyptians this was Egypt over the past 60 years I lived in this building that I was lucky enough to witness parts of it before being demolished over time and projects, new generations never got the chance to even know about it, accumulated problems that prior government never had the guts to solve but postponed so that we now have to face? The Power of Love to Egypt will help us live though this and bring the country back we need to be patient and supportive not just angry, we need to be positive and as our elected president said and myself said it many times before: President Sisi alone can do nothing we all are together in the same boat either reach a safe port or sink together the choice is yours people, just remember Egypt was and is blessed by God!
This is the POWER I meant as title the POWER OF LOVE to our country, as for the wisdom and smartness of our Army leadership, including the President Abd El Fatah El Sisi, or the Minister or Defence and high commander of the Army, this will be the subject of another future article.
May God Keep Blessing Egypt and Egyptians Amen!
