How does everyday life change when electricity becomes available to people?

Interesting stuff from an anthropologist who did research in Zanzibar:

So what has changed after the introduction of electricity?

What was most striking to me was the tremendous effect electricity has had on people’s time management. With electric light the day in theory has 24 hours instead of 12. People must make new choices as to what to do when. In consequence, time is speeding up and practices change: Women cook only two meals each day and not three as they used to (they now serve leftovers for the third meal). This is also linked to their wish to watch television in the evening and their opportunity to earn money during daytime.

Relations change in the process; the man has ‘entered the home’ in a new way. In the evenings, men and women now sit together in the same room, together with neighbours and the extended family. The electric light provide transparency and purity and the television programme is in focus. The paradox, although a phenomenon also observed in many other places, is that the spouses new opportunity to spend more time together actually provides less time for marital (?) intimacy. Sexual patterns change due to electricity. Because of this and also electricity’s high cost and rapid normalisation, there are signs that the birth rate is on the decrease. This was exemplified when men complained to me that due to the need for electricity, it is becoming too expensive to have more than one wife, or even get married at all.

...read the rest of it HERE.

Easter Holidays

It's been so busy lately, so the Easter holidays this year are most welcome! We've been really lucky with the weather too:-)







Happy holidays! Also - today the wife and I have been together 8 years! Hurrah! I feel very lucky and thankful:-)

Muzak

If all elevator music was like this, I'd look up all the tall buildings I could find!

Tagged

I was tagged by Turunga, my task is to post the sixth photo in the sixth folder. It's not often I get tagged!:-) Maybe because I don't respond if it's something that takes a long time (like "100 things about me"), and if it's an easy thing, it still takes me two weeks to do it. Anyway, here it is:



This is Relly and her puppies. Such a sweet dog! Relly was my parents in law's former dog.

One of the puppies later became this dog:



Sita. Sweet and lovely, but also a little more unruly! I tag everyone on my blog roll. Feel free to be as unresponsive and lazy as I am:-)

Yesterday on the mountain

The sun is back, and the days are getting longer and longer!


More photos here!