If a Power Pole Falls in Yaounde…

/ ziegelbaur / 2 Comments
 
Power poles down across the road in front of our house
  If a power pole falls in Yaounde and only a dozen residences are affected, how long will it take to get your power back?   Probably longer than you hope for.
 

Monday morning at 11:30 AM the lights in the house flickered and went out.  I heard a thud, went outside the gate to investigate and the above picture is the scene I saw.  A power pole and a telephone wire pole across the road and wires stretched and broken.  Thankfully none were “hot”. 

 

I was assured by neighbors that the power company had been called.  Guys from various cable companies (including the one who provides our internet and television) came to gather up their cables before thieves could get them.  This was my first clue that repairs may take awhile.   By afternoon I was told that power company workers had been there in the afternoon to assess needed equipment but it was too late in the day to begin work.

 

That night and every night until the power was back, we enjoyed dinner by candle light.  The trick was getting food out of the fridge without letting the coldness escape.  Thankfully I was able to use a neighbor’s freezer and fridge to keep from losing perishables.  A bit less enjoyable for the kids was trying to do homework to candle light.  And with no good light for reading nor screens to look at (TV, computer or even ipods) everyone went to bed much earlier than usual.

 

 
So all day Tuesday I was expecting to see workers come do repairs and turn on the power.  But they never came.  So Wednesday became my lesson in “If you want something done at all, do it yourself.”  I called the phone number on our electric bill and was told that there’s a process.  Any of you living in Yaounde, if power outage affects just a few homes, here’s what you do – oh, even if a power pole is blocking a street, and there are wires down on the ground, this is the process:
 
1.  Photocopy your most recently paid Sonel (electric company) bill.
2.  Draw a map on the back of the photocopied bill, showing where in the city your house is. (We don’t have street names or addresses on our houses)  Also write your phone number.
3.   Take this photocopy and map to the Sonel Central office downtown (on Furniture Row before you get to the Score Circle, across from the park) and give it to the man in the “Depannage” office.  You’ll have to have someone show you as it’s around the side of the building.
4.  In the Depannage office you’ll find a man at a computer.  He will register your complaint in the computer and assign a work team to it.  He told me that the downed pole was not in their computer; they had no knowledge of our crisis!
5.  Wait for the work team to visit the site and requisition needed supplies.
6.  It helps if you know someone who knows someone in high places… which I discovered I do, so that helped.
 
And finally, Thursday afternoon a work team arrived in a pick-up with 2 new poles.  One to replace the one that had already fallen, and one to replace the one across from the end of our driveway. 
 
 

Work team arrives and sets to work digging a new hole for a new pole
Here’s what it looked like from our yard when they replaced the pole across from our driveway.  There is quite a mess of wires to sort through.
 
 
By 6pm on Thursday the power was restored to our home!  And by then I learned how much we appreciate electricity in our home, I learned the process of reporting a power problem that affects few residences, and I learned that if you want to be sure something’s done, do it yourself.  Oh and many thanks to those who allowed me use of a fridge/freezer for the week, to those in the SIL office who helped make things happen quickly, and big thanks to the work team who replaced 2 power poles and plugged us back in!
 
Work team who fixed our power problems

 

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  1. I’m amazed they actually got it fixed in less than a week! Congratulations. It’s not just Cameroon- we were without telephone service for an entire summer (about 3 months) in 1998 in Puerto Rico, which is a U.S. territory! (and we lived right next door to the Coast Guard Base, which usually meant that we got our electric problems fixed quickly – but I guess they didn’t share the same telephone service!) It turned out that the repairman who was responsible for our neighborhood was on an extended sick-leave. As soon as his health recovered and he was back on the job the phone lines were repaired!

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