My home­town of Kitui, bet­ter known as Texas, has one traf­fic light. One. Amaz­ing­ly, every­one obeys it, includ­ing my boda bodabud­dies, who else­where treat red lights as sug­ges­tions. We are not a dis­or­der­ly peo­ple. Give a Kenyan just one thing that works, and he will respect it.

Now watch him become an elec­tric­i­ty cus­tomer. He pays before he con­sumes. He buys tokens at nine at night and waits for a mes­sage that nev­er arrives. When it rains, he knows the evening is over. The mon­ey leaves his phone in sec­onds. Kenya Pow­er’s own char­ter promis­es him sup­ply with­in 24 hours of pay­ment. Ask any­one who has wait­ed four days.

My inquis­i­tive mind uncov­ered what almost nobody knows. Legal Notice 79 of 2021 per­mits one out­age per month, each no longer than an hour. Then read the rest.

The Sched­ule sets a breach at twen­ty thou­sand shillings a year for inter­rup­tions that are too fre­quent and twen­ty thou­sand for inter­rup­tions that are too long. Reg­u­la­tion 10 says that one inci­dent dark­en­ing the whole coun­try counts as one con­tra­ven­tion. And Reg­u­la­tion 8 says the reg­u­la­tor may impose it. May. So, Kenya Pow­er can fail all ten mil­lion of its cus­tomers all year for forty thou­sand shillings. A kiosk los­es more in one spoiled weekend.

Then Reg­u­la­tion 13 dis­solves it. No penal­ty is payable for a fall­en tree out­side the wayleave or for a major gen­er­a­tion fail­ure. Kenya Pow­er’s man­ag­ing direc­tor says trees cause 50 to 70 per­cent of out­ages. So, by its own account, most of our dark­ness is excused by law. And the caus­es are not pub­lished, so no one can test it. Wah!

This is not a wicked com­pa­ny. It is a struc­ture that no one comes back to check. Unex­pect­ed­ly, two thirds of what it earns goes out in direct costs before any­one replaces a trans­former, and the ground is shift­ing beneath it. Sev­en in ten units it sells go to large cus­tomers. Open access now invites oth­ers to serve. Their pre­mi­um keeps your tar­iff down. I tell you!

This is a green mat­ter. Kenya’s elec­tric­i­ty is over­whelm­ing­ly renew­able, and only a wire car­ries it to a kitchen. When the wire fails, nobody waits. They buy a gen­er­a­tor or burn char­coal. A col­laps­ing grid does not mere­ly incon­ve­nience us. It defor­ests useven as we com­mem­o­rate Mazin­gi­ra Day.

I must con­fess my share. El Niño will bring above-aver­age rain over four-fifths of Kenya, and our euca­lyp­tus guide sets dis­tances from rivers and roads, none from pow­er lines. I have asked Kenyans to plant. I must now say where not to plant.

Let’s be fair about blame. The line­man who climbs a pole at two in the morn­ing dur­ing a storm did not design the tar­iff. If we sup­port this com­pa­ny, and we must, let the help reach the more than ten thou­sand employ­ees who car­ry it, not the fail­ing struc­ture.

So, mend the struc­ture before these rains end. Give the stan­dard a num­ber the reg­u­la­tor can enforce. Count a black­out by the homes it dark­ens. And pub­lish two things month­ly: what caused the dark­ness and how many cus­tomers claimed com­pen­sa­tion, which the law requires them to count, but nobody has seen.

Then act. Com­plain in writ­ing and keep the ref­er­ence num­ber. If they fail you, the reg­u­la­tor must decide with­in six­ty days. If that fails, the Tri­bunal can award dam­ages. The forty thou­sand nev­er reach­es you. Your claim can.

The Kam­ba have a say­ing: “ukatelemela kyam­bioni ta mbili.” The tick clings to the hide, suck­ing con­tent­ed­ly, unaware that the ani­mal was slaugh­tered and the skin pegged out to dry. The largest cus­tomers are already being invit­ed to leave.

Kenya Pow­er will not be saved by our loy­al­ty, nor will it be killed by com­pe­ti­tion. It will be saved or lost by design. A peo­ple who stop at one traf­fic light in Kitui have earned a grid that stays on.Think Green, Act Green.