Freetown May Finally Get Power

In 2004, I spent a few months working in Sierra Leone for a legal aid clinic.  At work, I would routinely lose computer files to the whims of a sputtering power generator with a cranky temperment (I was told there were sometimes evil genies involved).  At home, I got used to rationing out generator fuel and relishing those glorious moments that came once every two or three days when we would have a few hours of city power.  It would feel like a cross between a miracle from God and that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you find a twenty dollar bill in a pair of jeans you haven't worn in awhile: it was always yours, but you never expected to see it again.  You hit the jackpot.

In 2004, it was already five years since the end of most of the fighting, three since the peace accord, and probably over a year since the multi-million dollar project to "end impunity" with flat screens, high pressure water, and 24 hour power (a.k.a. the Special Court for Sierra Leone) was built.  But this was still a "post conflict society" and so little conveniences like electricity could hardly be expected.  Who could possibly spare money to fix roads or power generators when all Western dollars were being funneled into DNGOs and all manner of UN "make work" projects in the name of human rights and justice?

Such was my thinking until I was stranded for a few hours on the road to Bo.  I hitched a ride on a poda poda and made it there eventually, but not until long after dark.  Bo town is a small town, but it is the center of Sierra Leone's diamond trading industry, a colony of Lebanese middlemen.  When I arrived, I expected to see the same glow of kerosene lamplight I grew to love in Freetown, spilling out on the streets from vendors' shop.  Instead, it was all bright, white incadescent light bulbs.  Electrical power?  All the time?   Everywhere? 

I learned a valuable lesson that night: diamonds can buy 24 hour power, paved roads, vespas and beautiful Sierra Leonean girls for ugly foreign businessmen.

*   *   *

It's now 2006, and in the intervening years, the government still hasn't managed to set up a reliable power grid. 

Vice President Berewa recognizes that the continued lack of basic services in even the capital city is undermining the government's legitimacy:

"What ever we have done and continue to do as a government is over shadowed by this problem of lack of electricity."

A group of Moroccan engineers has recently arrived in Sierra Leone intent on changing that. 

"The Morrocan Engineers arrived in Freetown over the weekend with tons of loads of equipment and spare-parts for the generators at the National Power Authority (NPA) power house at Kingtom," Awareness Times reported.

Does that look like light at the end of the tunnel?

Comments

[christ alain]

Thanks for all those informations, I definitely hate all those businessmen. It's seems so easy to corrupt people's morality if you have some money in countries where living standards are under poverty line criterias and mostly countries afflicted by remoted conflicts or the so called civilians wars. Indeed what a change from the place you stood to the lights of Bo.

"back to africa from no man's land to mainland".

[dfg]

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