Power cuts

First, as always, my apologies for the long time between posts. There is so much going on right now that updating my blog keeps falling to the bottom of the list. Compounding that, Kedougou has started to experience the power cuts and irregularities that have been plaguing the rest of the country for some time now.

Senelec is THE power company and it is government owned. From just those two facts I'm sure you can surmise a lot of the problems they have here. Although before I start bashing the idea of government owned utilities I would like to point out a benefit that they do have: they don't have to be profitable. In theory this enables Senelec to bring power to places where a private company never would. In practice I'm not sure how much that happens. Also, while Senelec's services can fail, the company itself cannot. For example, if they are providing unreliable power and the people refuse to pay because of it, the company will not go bankrupt. In the short term this is fortunate because that's exactly what is happening. It all started right after the World Cup. As soon as it was over there were massive extended power cuts in the capital, Dakar. Naturally people were up in arms about this and demanded an explanation. Senelec's answer was that they bought some bad gas which could not be burned in the newer generators in Dakar. Knowing that there would be blood on their hands if they cut power during the world cup they used up all of there reserve gas to keep power on throughout the tournament. Since that time they have continued to have gas supply or other issues which have been slowly affecting the other cities and towns with power around Senegal. What the solution is I don't know but I do know that the president has said that the situation is not going to change for at least a year. So, on a hourly and daily basis power here will continue to be sporadic. A serious problem for anyone doing any sort of skilled trade and a less important but more personal problem for my ability to obtain ice cream bars in 110 degree heat.