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Living in the dark From Cuba to India, people around the world cope with regular and prolonged power outages.
Nepal
A Nepalese woman prepares candles for sale in Kathmandu, Nepal. The demand for candles has gone up after the Nepal Electricity Authority increased power cuts to 11 hours a day. Nepal produces less than half the electricity it needs, which means load shedding has become a fact of life.
Niranjan Shrestha
/
AP
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Cuba
Loyda Castillo, 16, reads a magazine during a 2005 power outage in Havana. The Cuban government plans to invest $50 million to upgrade Havana’s electricity grid, which has had multiple power outages this year.
Jorge Rey
/
AP
Ivory Coast
Vendors in one of the largest markets in Ivory Coast, the covered Adjame market in Abidjan, work in the dark during a 2010 power outage. One of Africa’s leaders in electricity supply, the country endured power cuts because of a shortfall in production.
Issouf Sanogo
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AFP/Getty Images
Gaza Strip
Members of a Palestinian family are reflected in a mirror as they sit around a kerosine lamp in their living room during a 2010 power outage in Gaza City’s al-Shati refugee camp.
Mahmud Hams
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AFP/Getty Images
Gaza Strip
A Palestinian family eats dinner by candle light during a 2007 power outage in Gaza City. Blackouts in Gaza occur regularly. In June 2012, for example, militants hijacked trucks delivering fuel to the Gaza Strip, causing the power station there to cease functioning for a day.
Abid Katib
/
Getty Images
Bangladesh
Women activists supporting Bangladesh's main opposition party, the Bangladesh Awami League, hold pots and lanterns as they shout anti-government slogans during a 2003 demonstration in Dhaka. Today, the country still fails to generate enough electricity for its population of over 160 million people.
Shawkat Khan
/
AFP/Getty Images
Haiti
People watch TV in a street in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The nation has the lowest coverage of electricity in the Western Hemisphere, with only about 10 percent of its 8.5 million people having access to power full-time, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.
Ariana Cubillos
/
AP
Ethiopia
Kesse Atle, a security guard, sits inside his guard shack on a street in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he was hired by several merchants to protect their shops at night. The World Bank has come under fire for its plans to dam the Omo River in southern Ethiopia in order to provide power to more than 200 million people in the region. The dam is scheduled to begin operating in 2014.
Miguel Juarez
Pakistan
A vendor in the mountain resort town of Muree, in northeastern Pakistan, sells batter-coated eggs and other fried treats by the light of a gas lantern. The town has been hard hit by rotating power cuts that last 15 to 18 hours a day. Businesses and residents also have to ration water because of a shutdown of pumping stations that rely on electricity. With summer temperatures hitting 115 degrees in the flatlands, tourists flock to Murree, elevation 7,500 feet, for its cooler weather.
Michele Langevine Leiby
/
For The Washington Post
Iraq
Students study by lamplight in their Baghdad home in December 2004. Saboteurs had caused a fire at a major power plant north of Baghdad the previous day, knocking out electricity to a large swathe of the country. More recently, power outages reportedly interrupted viewing of the 2012 Summer Olympics throughout Iraq, where the grid can only supply a few hours of electricity each day, according to the AFP.
Samir Mizban
/
AP
India
A barber holding a candle cuts a customer’s hair at his shop in Kolkata. India’s energy crisis cascaded over half the country in late July and early August, when three of its regional grids collapsed, leaving more than 620 million people without government-supplied electricity in, by far, the world’s biggest blackout.
Bikas Das
/
AP
Iraq
Electoral workers at a polling station in Najaf, Iraq, start the process of sorting and counting ballot papers by lamplight, due to power cuts, following parliamentary elections in March 2010.
Alaa al-Marjani
/
AP
New York
George Efthimiadis, right, stands by with a battery-powered light as his mother, Elizabeth Efthimiadis, lies in bed in a dark, hot room in their apartment on the sixth day of the 2006 Queens blackout. The power outage affected 174,000 people during a heat wave and dragged on for weeks.
Tina Fineberg
/
AP
Liberia
A displaced girl sits in the former Continental Hotel preparing lunch, without electricity or water, for her family in Monrovia, Liberia, in September 2003. Liberia’s hydropower plant was destroyed during war in the early 2000s, and access to power continues to hold back business development in the country.
Schalk Van Zuydam
/
Associated Press
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