Darkest Africa

It started four days after school had finished, time enough for most of the expats to have left for their long holidays in the developed world.  Then, out of the blue, one morning the power stopped.  No warning, no preparation, just no power, just like that, for 8 hours at a time.  Expat Zambia (the Facebook group for, obviously, expats) went crazy with questions and cursing ZESCO, the state owned power company.

First Facebook post:

"Wanted: generator to power family home.

Need to power my house (lights, telly, fridge... you know, the normal shit we rely on in the 21st century) has arisen due to those useless, cretinous, incompetent, corrupt, oxygen thieves, carpetbaggers, Ostrogoth, heathen, moneygrabbing, parasitic, blood sucking, toxic waste, inept, greedy, power selling, excuse mongering, disappointing, child scaring, Visigoth, philistine, cable chewing mynock, hangings-too-good-for-them, waste of spaces at ZESCO informing me that I can expect no power from 4pm until 8pm every day until further notice."

ZESCO is the largest power company in Zambia producing about 80% of the electricity consumed in the country.  Each day, the power would go out at a different time, the cut would last for a different amount of time and it became obvious that this wasn’t a short term thing.  But still no word from ZESCO on what or why this was happening. We devoured each new FB post with the requisite hunger, and critiqued with equal vigour; rumours abounded.  Then slowly, little bit at a time, real information began to emerge from ZESCO and other sources.  There is so much now, and the factors behind why we’re having power cuts are worthy of a table.  But I’ll resist and try and put it in prose…and put the table at the end for my own benefit.

We have some very big rivers in Zambia, in fact the hydropower created from this water provides 99.6% of Zambia’s power.  The big rivers include the Zambezi, the river that flows south from the north west of Zambia, out to Angola, back to Zambia and south to the border (although I suppose the river was there before the border). This vast river crashes over the Victoria Falls and on into Lake Kariba, the largest manmade lake in the world by volume.  The power generated from the Kariba dam provides around 40% alone of Zambia’s power.

Showing Zambia and the mighty Zambezi 

Power demand currently stands at around 2,200MW (for comparison the UK’s is around 40,000MW) and has been growing at about 200MW a year (I understand the UK’s is actually falling year on year) for at least the last five years.  Since the Zambian power plants were built, they have had little to no investment, and barely even routine maintenance, owing principally to the fact that the cost of electricity to the consumer is below the cost of recovery.  Little planning was done to see when demand would outstrip supply, and to prepare for that eventuality.  Add to that the somewhat dry wet season we had last year.  So here we are with daily power cuts.

As I said, it was a good three weeks before ZESCO explained anything, a huge difference between developed and developing countries in general.  Why did it take them so long to tell their customers what was going on?  Why could they not create a timetable to begin with, and why can they still not stick to it?  How did they not know about this months before?  Why wasn’t there, and indeed, isn’t there, any sort of public education programme on preserving power?  I suppose ZESCO could be said to have attempted it, in so much as they have one advert encouraging customers to turn off all unnecessary electronic equipment.  It was displayed on one of three electronic billboards in Lusaka - oh the irony.

Disbelief expressed by ZESCO Senior Manager for Marketing and Public Relations Bessie Phiri that customers aren’t knuckling down and helping, never mind that ZESCO haven’t told them how, or what is expected of them: “Regrettably, it has been noted that when power is restored to our customers after load shedding, the demand for power is very high, as customers are trying to maximise the usage of electricity when it is available.  This pattern of consumption is not helping the situation, as the energy that ZESCO needs to save is not being saved, hence defeating the purpose of power rationing”.

The daily reality of living without a commodity one assumed was here to stay, is far reaching.  It is worse than having not had it to begin with. Having power is so normal; certainly there was the odd power cut last year but not this.  There are knock on effects.  The first of which was a run on LP gas as everyone rushed out to the three outlets to fill up their camping gas cylinders.  Then there was no diesel because anyone who had a generator was needing vast amounts of diesel.  And absolutely, without a doubt, the worst repercussion is when the water stops because just like everything else the water treatment works gets switched off.  Poor urban planning means that industrial, residential, retail and to some extent agricultural areas are all mixed up and fed by the same power supply lines.  On top of all that we watch in despair as the Kwacha drops against the £ and the $ (nearly 50% to date, the worst performing currency of the 155 tracked by Bloomberg) as the price of copper falls globally added to the fact the copper mines, agriculture and any industry suffer from the lack of power too.

So when Mum and Dad Powell arrived it only seemed natural that their first evening should be spent communing with us in darkness.  This really is deepest darkest Africa.

The first teatime with Mum and Dad - by candlelight

It was so lovely having Mum and Dad here, to have them see what we see, experience day-to-day life with us, meet our friends and have our life understood.  When we talk to them now, they know Ron and Miriam, they know that you have to cross the basketball courts to get to Steve’s classroom and they’ve seen the funny quirks of staying at Tabonina in Livingstone.  We explored the over-hyped Tiffany’s Canyon together, we drove together to and from Lower Zambezi and Siavonga and we thrilled at seeing elephants, hippos and crocodiles, and all us of tried to allay Callum’s (very real) fears of hippos and elephants in the lodge area, whilst not being completely convinced by our own arguments.  And we together experienced the power cuts.  You just can’t get better than that.

Power cut humour

More power cut humour

24 hours power?

On the evening of Tuesday 8^th September President Lungu and 59,999 fans sat down to watch a national football friendly, Zambia (aka Chipolopolos) against Gabon at Heroes' stadium in Lusaka. Here it is important to know that in 1993 on their way to play a FIFA world cup qualifier against Senegal the aircraft carrying most of the Zambian football team tragically crashed into the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of Gabon killing all 25 passengers and five crew members. It is still thought to have been an attack carried out by Gabon rather than an accident.  So back to the story…about half way through the game the flood lights went out, with ZESCO instituting their power cuts. Someone must have sorted things out because the lights came back on after a few minutes, only to go out again not long after, this time for over 15 minutes. The Gabon team were allegedly fearing this could be a reprisal lynching for the perceived attack 30 years ago.  But from the turn of events it became clear the focus of the crowd’s frustration was the president not the opposing team; they started singing “substitute Lungu, substitute Lungu!” He was not amused and has ordered ZESCO to issue an apology disassociating him with power cuts. Must be the first time he's experienced a power cut.  On a upbeat note, although I’m sure there were repercussions for some poor ZESCO employee, I am very thankful to be living in a country where expression of that sort of dissatisfaction is acceptable.

It seems that the rest of Southern Africa is also suffering from the same power cuts for the same reason as here – poor planning, incompetence, mismanagement and demand outstripping supply.  I’m supposing that it’ll be at least 5 years, if one accounts for the usual political hold ups and other nonsense, before this is sorted out.  It certainly isn’t going to change any time soon and we must learn to get round the daily lack of power.  We’ve invested in some super lamps that are solar charged for the occasional evening power cut.  We’ll look at installing a very simple, semi-permanent 3 solar light system with the solar panel fixed to the roof too if it looks like we’re going to start having regular after-dark outages.  I think we must live on a block with some minor ZESCO employee because we are rarely without power after 6.

So, it’s tricky living through this because our way of life is not adjusted to deal with no power.  But as time goes people find ways around the problems, gas ovens are making a serious entry into the market, solar powered inverters, generators, solar powered lighting and charging.  People get ingenious.  Let’s hope that the situation births something beneficial – you know, like the Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894, debated at the first international urban planning conference (something Zambia has clearly never been represented at), found there was no solution, but within 15 years the advent of the car had made a seemingly insurmountable problem completely disappear.  The ultimate in the “something will turn up” philosophy.