ESCOM-The Electric Supply Company of Malawi---or---hey, where's my flashlight?

The following is a short rant regarding one of the biggest problems facing a nation struggling to develop its economy and take care of its people.

The power grid in Malawi is, well, interesting to say the least. As I write this blog, we are in the throws of a scheduled power outage in Lilongwe. It started about an hour ago, at 6:30 in the evening, and will probably last another hour, till 8:30 (for all you math wizzes out there, that makes it 7:30 now). ESCOM’s slogan is "Power All Day, Every Day," for which they are currently being sued by consumer and hotelier groups across the country for false advertising. Everywhere in Malawi has "scheduled" outages every day. In most areas of Lilongwe, the schedule is from 6-8 at night, give or take a half hour (Please not that this is the time when everyone would like to be cooking dinner on their electric stovetops and ovens, as only the very elite rich have bottled gas and/or generators). Now, most people could be understanding of this eventuality. Malawi is a land-locked developing nation with limited resources, and as such, the production of electricity here is almost nonexistent. As far as we have been able to ascertain, the power here is almost entirely imported from South Africa. Because of that, and because maintaining the grid requires cutting people off, they are forced to cut power at certain times to certain areas. The problem is that the outages often occur outside of the scheduled time slots. In Senga Bay, for instance, the power is supposed to be off from 7-9 in the morning (another lousy time to not have power), but often it would be out for 3 or 4 hours in the late afternoon or evening. In Mzuzu last Sunday, the power was off from before we woke up until about 7 at night. Lilongwe, it seems, has the most sporadic outages we have encountered. Keep in mind that Lilongwe is the capital of this country, and a city of close to a million people, and yet, ESCOM just can’t get it right. You just never know when you’re going to have electricity and when you’re not. I’m sure they have "valid" reasons for this behavior, but it seems to me that ESCOM is like a rich 8 year old kid who just got a really cool toy for his birthday. He’ll let you play with it for a couple minutes, but as soon as you get comfortable with it, he rips it from your hands and laughs in your face. A few hours later he’ll let you play with it again, and the cycle continues. The Malawians are, by nature, extremely laid back people, who don’t let much get to them. But even they are frustrated by the power situation in their country. Consumer groups and Hotelier groups in Lilongwe and Blantyre have tried to get answers from ESCOM about the random outages, but ESCOM has yet to come up with them. (By the way, the power has come back on…it’s 8:00 now.) Anyway, I don’t have any answers to this problem aside from firing all the management types and starting over, but that’s not a very good solution. I just wanted to let you in on a little bit of the joy of the 3rd world.
Zicomo Kwambili!
Jarrod