I was just reading through some of the posts and stumbled on Dusan’s post about power cuts in Serbia. I figured it’d be interesting to post one of my own experiences of the same situation in Montenegro.
So my family is sitting on that balcony, I’m inside the house (sorry, no pictures of the interior), watching some the very primitive TV we have available. I’m not really paying attention. In any case, it comes to be very late when suddenly everything just shuts off. Now, we’re not near the city, we’re in a village. A power cuts means complete darkness. It’s an interesting feeling being unwillingly exposed to the darkness, it feels very invasive actually. In any case, we all kind of conglomerate on the balcony to see what we’re going to do. My brother finds one of those wind-up lanterns, and before we know it, we notice wind-up lanterns and flashlights start going off on the balconies and porches of other nearby houses.
The first thing that follows is some form of communication between neighbors which usually never talk to one another when there is power. We wave our lantern, they wave there’s. There’s little background noise, soon we start shouting to one another across the field that is in the middle of all these houses (visible in the first picture). Before you know it, the entire neighborhood is throwing jokes from their own porches and balconies, usually serious people now making noises at each other and laughing. Inevitably, being that the power is out for so long, everyone conglomerates in the field in the middle, people bring food, and we sit around these windup lanterns talking about life, acting like a larger family. All conflicts are set aside, stories are being told, laughs are being shared. And then we hear distant yelling, and we know what it means. A nearby village has gotten power. I look over (again visible in the first picture, but not too well) the valley that’s beside our village, and spot a wave of lights turn on in different villages across the country. We start cheering as well, the lights go on in our village. We all separate, and tomorrow, everyone goes back to not talking and just minding their own business.
It really reminded me of some of the moments in Station Eleven, and I can’t get any of these images out of my head when we read the book. This post isn’t an argument against technology, but more of an interesting insight on a possible effect of a temporary lack of technology. I’m sure that if the power cuts lasted for much longer, that camaraderie would soon turn into chaos.