A Peace Corps Experience
Introduction:
After graduation from the University of Iowa, Jensy Patterson joined the Peace Corps in the summer of 1978. She was sent to Kenya, East Africa where she became one of four teachers staffing a 90-student Harambee high school. The rural village that is her home now lies in mountainous terrain near Lake Victoria and Kisii in western Kenya. The area has only two seasons, the rainy and the dry. Daytime temperatures do not change much throughout the year, but nights during the dry season can be chilly. Here are some of Jensy's comments on her new life without electricity, excerpts from a letter she wrote to a snowbound friend in Iowa:
The Letter:
Keroka, Kenya, January 22, 1979
For your own knowledge, I'll try to describe some of the energy uses here. Of course, there is no electricity. There is some in Kisii town which is about 12 miles away.
Everyone lives in small mud and thatched huts. The only permanent buildings around are the school and my house. Even the small dukas (shops) down the road are made of tin.
Firewood is commonly used if the dead wood can be found. (I came back one weekend to find many of my trees chopped down.) It's hard for these people on the top of the mountain and on the sides because the trees help prevent erosion, yet they need the wood for cooking and occasionally for warmth. They cook in their huts on the floor or in chiko--a small round metal container. It sits on the ground and is similar to our barbecue stoves. The old men in the market make them and sell then for about 15/= to 25/= ($2-$3).
December is also charcoal making month. All over the hills you can see smoke billowing. They chop the wood and cover it with dirt, leaving some small holes, and then light it to remove the impurities. After about 18 hours they have charcoal. This is sold for about 20/= ($2.50) for a large burlap bag. This is what is most commonly used in the chiko cookers. They use kerosene to light them. This is also used in their lanterns.
Candles are also used for light, but not often. (I do use them, but they are expensive here.) Kerosene costs about 11/= ($1.50) for five liters. I also have a pressure lamp which is about 600 candle power, but these are very expensive. Mine cost about 300/= ($43). I almost feel bad about having it, but figure the cost of my eyesight is worth a lot more than the impression these people will get of me having so many things.
A few, very few, wealthy people use a gas cooker. There are also pump stoves that run on paraffin and some people use these, but I prefer the charcoal.
After awhile, all this becomes a way of life. I really enjoy not having electricity. Life is very simple without it. People usually go to bed early here too. 9:00 p.m. is "getting very late, madam!"
Kenyans depend on the sun for so much--time, drying clothes, crops. It seems the days are getting longer here, too.
Of course there is no running water either. I'm the only one within several miles who has a rain tank. The school provided it, but it leaks and thus I too am dependent on the "river" (small stream actually) for most of my daily water needs. Because of my cooker I can warm my bath water but most either bathe in the river or out of a bucket; both are chilling experiences, believe me!
Because there are no street lights there is very little transport on the road after 6:30 - 7:00 p.m. The African's eyesight must not adapt too well to driving at night.
Torches (Flashlights) are a part of every household. Batteries are very expensive. I have gone through so many. In physics I taught my kids that if you put the cells in the sun when they are weak, this exposure will repolarize them so that they can be used again. They were thrilled.
In all of Kenya there is only one "laundromat." It's in Nairobi and you can bet four of the six machines are always broken. Everyone does laundry by hand, then lays it on the grass to dry. I've learned to fold mine so they don't have too many wrinkles. There are charcoal irons though.
Of course, with no electricity there is no refrigeration. Many simply don't need it. My eggs last about three weeks and up on my hill my fresh butter will stay hard for two weeks. I'm extremely atypical though. No one else has the coolness I have.
There is milk in cartons I buy called UHT--it's ultra heated. Also margarine comes in a can and dried milk is popular. Many people enjoy the "sleeping milk" which is sour and curdled and kept in gourds. Kenyans think that the soured milk is very sweet and they simply can't understand why I don't like it. They use fresh milk only in tea.
Hope this gives you some picture of life without electricity. Cold sodas are unheard of as is beer. You get used to things!
As always,
Jensy
Teacher's Notes
Objective:
Students will gain information about the availability and use of energy in other cultures.
Materials:
Posterboard
Reference books
Texts
Teaching Suggestions:
After reading Life Without Electricity, use the following questions to guide a class discussion.
Extended Activities:
1. Language Arts: Decide upon an item that uses electricity and eliminate it from your life for one day. Keep an hourly log describing your feelings/ thoughts about not having access to this item.
2. Students could write reports on the following topics: How Charcoal is Made, Kerosene Lighting, First Power Plants, Pump Stoves, Charcoal Iron, Batteries, Paraffin, Electric Street Lights.
3. Culture Fair: Divide class into groups. Each group can research the lifestyles of one culture. Information gathered from the research can be presented to the class on a chart with the following categories: Communication, Transportation, Food, Recreation, Clothing, Homes, Occupations, Education, and Technology.
The northeastern U.S. is the Megalopolis - a vast intermeshing of cities, towns, and suburbs. It is urban America of the twentieth century brought to its fullest flower - and its fullest fragility. It is utterly dependent on turbine technology - a world that runs on electricity and on the faith that one only has to push a button, flick a switch or throw a lever to make electricity work. Electricity is its pulse, its power. And then one night the electricity stopped.
At 5:17 p.m. in Buffalo, 5:17 in Rochester, 5:18 in Boston, 5:28 in New York the clocks in the Megalopolis sputtered to a standstill. Lights blinked and dimmed and went out. Skyscrapers towered black against a cold November sky in 1965. Elevators hung immobile in their shafts. Subways ground dead in their tunnels. Streetcars froze in their tracks. Street lights and traffic signals went out - and with them the best-laid plans of the traffic engineers. Airports shut down. Mail stacked up in blacked-out post offices. Computers lost their memories. TV pictures darkened and died. Business stopped. Food started to sour in refrigerators. Telephones functioned but dial tones turned to shrill whines under a record overload. Nothing else seemed to work except transistor radios - and radios could only share the puzzlement and finally deliver the comforting news that the world had not come to an end, but that almost the entire Northeast had fallen victim to its very dependence on The System.
The System was the sprawling, interconnected grid of power networks that girdled the region - and when The System mysteriously broke down, the result was the most colossal power failure in history. It was a breakdown that wasn't supposed to have happened. Only a year before a Federal Power Commission report had pronounced that such grids were relatively invulnerable to even nuclear attacks. Like a string of Christmas tree lights, one power system after another blinked out in a wave of failures cascading down from the upper reaches of the grid. The big blackout engulfed 80,000 square miles across parts of eight U.S. states and Canada's Ontario province and left 30 million people in the dark.
New York's blackout was the longest - more than thirteen hours in some parts. It affected the most people; 600,000 trapped in stalled subways; nearly 100,000 stranded waiting for commuter trains that never ran; hundreds caged in elevators and thousands penned in skyscrapers. Incredibly, the blackout stopped short of catastrophe. There were no plane crashes, no train wrecks, no disastrous fires, no crime waves or looting sprees. And there was no panic. There were scores of auto accidents, most of them no more than minor bumps in the snail paced traffic. And crime rates in the region fell well below normal. Hospitals switched to emergency generators when they could, flashlights and candles when they could not. At St. Luke's in New York after a blackout delivery, an official confessed: "I can't tell you if it's a girl or boy."
Portable radios drew little knots of people everywhere; only radio mastered the communications collapse that blacked out TV and knocked out all morning papers except the Times.
The experience was sobering for the Megalopolitans - a rather unsettling lesson in how totally their lives are wired to electricity. The blackout stopped not only factories, but dentists' drills; not only subways, but electric mixers; not only lights, but clocks and cash registers, x-rays and milking machines, water pumps and hair dryers, stock tickers and stereo sets and doorbells. Electricity had become to a stunning extent the main current of American civilization.
The prevailing view among utility officials was that the blackout was a fluke that shouldn't have happened. And yet regional failures had happened before - notably a five-state Midwest blackout that blanketed four times as much territory though it affected only a tenth as many people. Some thought it could happen again - that the day might come when a failure in an interwoven nationwide grid could black out the entire U.S. within moments. The problem was that the grid system is efficient and economical when it works, however it produces disastrous results when it doesn't. "Power interconnections are a wonderful thing," said one utility man, "but the more we get, the more exposure we have to a major failure."
It was later determined that the power failure was caused by an improperly set shoebox-size protective relay at the Sir Adam Back No. 2 plant operated by the Hydroelectric Power Commission of Ontario on the Niagara River.
Discussion Questions:
1. Why did the blackout affect such a large area of the U.S. and Canada?
2. What were some of the problems that developed for the cities and their citizens as a result?
3. How might an individual prepare for the possibilities of a shutdown in our technological network?
4. Explain the importance of energy in our technological world.
5. What do you think would happen to our dependence on technology if energy in fossil fuel form were to disappear?
6. Ask students to relate stories associated with blackouts or brownouts they have experienced.
7. Here in the Midwest, there are often blackouts associated with floods, thunderstorms, and ice storms. How do you prepare for a possible loss of electricity to your home?
Extended Activities:
1. Compare the effects on your family of a three-day blackout in July to one in January.
2. Ask your parents and/or grandparents if they have had a blackout and what happened during it.
3. Use an atlas or almanac to locate the areas in the United States that were affected by the blackout. Calculate the population that would be affected if a blackout occurred there today. Use reference books to get this information.
Teacher Notes
Objectives:
The students will understand the effects of a blackout on their lives and on the lives of others.
Background:
A blackout is a total loss of electric power over a large area because of equipment failure during the generating or transporting of electric energy. Storms can cause blackouts over smaller areas such as a portion of a state or a whole town. A brownout is a reduction in power transmitted by the electric utilities. During a brownout a reduction of 5% is not uncommon. Brownouts sometimes occur during extremely hot weather when demand is high for electricity to operate fans and air conditioners.
The story in this activity discusses the most famous of blackouts. However, demand for electricity continues to climb, and there have been times when blackouts seemed likely. During the very cold winter of 1976-77, many schools and office buildings closed for extended periods in January because the demand for natural gas and electricity was so high. Closing these large buildings lowered the demands for energy for heat and light.
In January of 1994 a huge mass of frigid arctic air practically paralyzed much of the Midwest and East. temperatures in dozens of cities dropped to all-time lows. Federal buildings in Washington, DC, and other cities shut down. Schools closed and shopping malls opened at reduced hours as East Coast cities narrowly escaped widespread power outages. Overburdened electric utilities struggled to keep homes heated. In Philadelphia deep ice on the Delaware River kept fuel from getting to area power plants leading to temporary blackouts.
While the winter incidents mentioned above did not cause a 1966-sized blackout, they remind us that our dependence on electric energy is very high.
Materials:
Student sheets
Almanacs
Calculators
Teaching Suggestions:
1. Read the Background Information above to your class. Ask if any students in the class had ever experienced a power blackout because of a storm or electric utility equipment problem.
2. Read "A Dark Tuesday".
3. Have students answer questions in pairs or small groups.
4. Discuss answers as a whole class.
5. Read the following statement to your class:
"You have just come home from school. You turn on the radio, but nothing happens. You check the cord. No problem there, it's plugged in. Then you notice the clock has stopped. You check around the house and discover there is no electricity. A blackout! It has affected the whole neighborhood, the whole town. There is no indication of when the power will be restored. It may be off for days.
Write a story describing what might have happened to cause the blackout and how you and your family might react. What will life be like during the blackout?"
Extended Activities:
1. Invite an official from the utility company to come and discuss what they do to prevent blackouts.
2. Interview hospital administrators to find out measures they take to avoid more emergencies during a blackout.
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