Electricity!!

Electricity!

Ok, so we don’t have air or heat…but contrary to popular belief they have electricity here. However it is quite different. They have a system they called Pre-paid electricity. This means that you pay for electricity before you use it. Just like you buy minutes for a pre-paid phone you buy “watts”. So you go to the petro station (gas station) and buy R100 worth of electricity and give them your box number. Then they give you a code to dial into your box at home. You dial it in and wala! Electricity. Cool huh?

Since we are on electricity I thought I would let you guys look at the outlets here. I know that’s not something you think about but did you know you can’t use American appliances everywhere? So you have to buy a converter to convert your American appliance to South African appropriate wattage. They don’t have the same outlets in all countries of Africa either; below you will see two separate countries. You see this little switch on the side of it? You can cut this switch on and off which lessens the amount of electricity you use. Although you aren’t using something it is still using electricity if it is plugged in. So this is a good way to help be eco-friendly and not waste electricity!