When the Lights Went Out in Our Compound

I remember the sound before the darkness — the fan slowing, the fridge sighing, and then that heavy silence that every African home knows too well. "Dumsor," we call it in Accra. Light off, light on. Except too often it is only off.

My children would gather around one candle, sharing its small circle of light to finish their homework. My youngest, Kojo, would ask me, "Maa, why does the light not stay?" I never had a good answer.

A blackout is never just a blackout. It is spoiled food we could not afford to lose. It is a clinic freezer failing. It is a tailor who cannot finish an order, a barber who sends customers home. The darkness has a cost, and it is always the hardworking who pay it.

That night, holding my daughter's exercise book to the candle, I decided our family's story would not be one of waiting. We would find our own light. That decision is where this whole journey began.