Power to/for the people!
on Wonderous Wanderland (Burkina Faso), 28/Mar/2011 16:21, 34 days ago
Sunday morning - 27th March 2011, 7am. There is no electricity in the house. Not that this is anything new but the past week the power cuts really have multiplied, both in frequency and duration. The day before yesterday we spent 12 hours without electricity, the longest cut so far. Nevertheless, we are with the lucky ones: we have no water cuts (yes, they also happen!). Martin& Alison, and especially My who live in the poorer areas of the city often have no running water for hours - even days - on end. They have to cope with filling up buckets and huge waste bins to be able to take a‘shower’, flush the toilet, fill up their water filters, wash their clothes and dishes,... Here at the villa, we take a shower at least twice a day and water the garden as much too. Speaking of a decadent life-style!!As to the reason for all these cuts, there are different explanations, stories, versions of stories, rumors,... some more credible than others but none of them completely false for sure either. Let’s take a look at them and you pick the one you like :-)!Version 1:Sonabel, the national electricity company recently put an announcement in the newspapers, apologizing for the inconvenience and explaining that due to the problems in Ivory Coast - where most of Burkina’s electricity comes from - the available reserves are insufficient to cover the demand. Apparently Burkina is generating some of its own electricity - but only a very small percentage, and at the moment not even at full capacity - so the company sees itself obliged to cut the power on a regular basis. Underneath the message they’d made the effort to print a calendar or planning to inform the public which areas (“secteurs”) will be cut off when. They’ve divided allsecteurs- both poor and rich - into two groups. According to their planning, group 1 won’t have any electricity on monday, wednesday, friday and sunday from 8am till 3pm, and on tuesday, thursday and saturday from 3pm till 11pm. For group 2 it’ll be the other way around. Looked impressive!Sunday 7am, and no electricity already for a few hours - waking up a few times during the night all sweaty and hot‘cause the fans aren’t working, makes you notice these things - doesn’t seem to fit the planning... :-)! Euhm....surprised? Not really, not anymore....:-).Version 2:There is a rotating monthly system. Eachsecteur- or group ofsecteurs- gets cut off from the power supply more regularly during one month. After that month the system switches to a different group and everything turns back to‘normal’ - which means you still have power cuts but they tend to happen a little (or a lot) less and to last less long too. This version might explain why there were hardly any power cuts in the villa the first few weeks, and why there were a lot of them during the past week. It also keeps thehope up that it will get better again. So I gladly vote for this one :-)!!Version 3:At moments when demand is too high, they simply cut off the poorest areas in the city. That way the rich can still turn on their air-cons and/or fans, their televisions, computers, freezer-fridges or other‘basic needs'-equipment, without too much inconvenience and without having to drain their emergency generators too much either (true, fuel IS very expensive at the moment, and who needs light in a poor hospital room anyway?!). I don’t like this version but looking at how the power cuts seem distributed throughout the city, it seems definitely very likely...Version 4:Given that a lot of power cuts happen late at night now, there are rumors that they are also aimed to keep any more unrest from happening - or maybe to make it easier to hide when it does happen :-)! This seems a bit far fetched to me but....who knows.Whatever the reason, fact remains that for long hours each day (and night) there is no electricity in most part of the city, and that this situation has become worse over the past couple of months. Some businesses and services have generators - some even have generators that work too (!) - but most of them have not. They say that the government refuses to search for alternative sources - perhaps through the more stable Ghana instead of Ivory Coast. But Ghana is an anglophone country and it seems more important to keep a good relationship with the francophone neighbours than to get a steady power supply. Solar power also seems a very good alternative here - considering I have seen maybe ten drops of rain since our arrival - but apart from a few (pilot?) projects, solar power doesn’t seem to be widespread at all.In any case, there is no pressure to change or improve anything either. People here have accepted and adapted. No one complaining or protesting when yet another evening is spent in the dark, when light switches aren’t responding, shop tills aren’t working,.... Nope, in Burkina no ‘power-struggles’, so why the need to change anything at all :-)?!