On our first day in Dakar, our real estate broker, Serge, finally found us at the air port and brought us to the apartment we've stayed at the last three days, a rather nice place overlooking a ruinous looking structure to the right and the United Nations building to the left. Not only did the three bedroom apartment have two fully functional bathrooms and a balcony, but to our techie delight, it sported an already functional Internet connection. We had done this seven months before, renting an apartment for the US Social Forum in which obtaining Internet seemed harder than driving the data to its destination. Senegal welcomed us, not only with a great place to stay, but with something better, easy Internet. Before arriving we expected to tether cell phones to gain access to the web, so this was like a heavenly technophilic dreamscape. As the landlord showed us the many and multilingual television stations, everything went dead. Serge and the landlord looked at each other, exchanged a shrug and perhaps a wolof phrase, their irritation perhaps hidden by trepidatious smiles. In our post flight, groggy minds, the event meant little, but it certainly had a history.
For years now, Senegal has suffered the difficult economic realities of what many consider an irresponsible government and others consider capitalist exploitation. In an affront to Senegalese suffering, last year President Abdoulaye Wade generated significant criticism over the construction of an "African Renaissance" statue commemorating the 50th anniversary of Senegalese Independence [1]. 
African Renaissance Statue The statue was erected during an ongoing energy crisis in the country that dates back to 2006 when the Dakar oil refinery SAR shutdown for 9 months due to financial problems. In order to get the refinery back into operation, the Senegalese government agreed to purchase Shell and ExxonMobil's portion of the refinery, raising its stake in the company from 10% to 57% [2]. Owned for 40 years by primarily Western energy companies, this move transformed SAR into a natively owned refinery for the first time in its history. Unfortunately, the Senegalese people have seen no improvement in their power situation since this change.
Having failed at doing enough research, we the small US techie group did not know much about the power situation in Senegal, but we quickly learned. Our first power outage lasted only a short time, an hour at most. Still in a new country in which none of us spoke either the colonial language or the native tongue fluently, we assumed that sometimes brown outs happened as they have in Los Angeles. Soon, however, we would be greeted with evidence to suggest differently and discover a history proving so. The evidence began on Tuesday morning and poured into the night.
Like many Muslim cultures, the call to morning prayer begins at 5am in Liberté 6, the area in Dakar we're staying, the time varies between 4:35 and 5am. I have found it a soothing bed time song more than a wake up call. However, my colleagues sporting a more normative schedule woke Tuesday to discover no power. After a late breakfast, we left the apartment and journeyed into the city to Enda, the organization housing some of the World Social Forum organizers, a group of French, Brazilian, Moroccan, and Senegalese. 
Social Forum organizers at Enda.Working in the city center has the apparent advantage of consistent power, and we were able to connect to the Internet and do some of our work from there. Our return home in the evening, however, left us again without power. 
Making coffee in the dark.Cooking in the dark carries serious dangers; we decided to go out to eat at a place called New Africa, a hip new restaurant with live music and a happening environment (or so said our guide book). It was a nice place with few people, and on the cab ride there we learned that in Senegalese culture, or at least in Dakar, rather than using addresses to find things, you simply get near by and ask people where it is. Thanks to our cab driver for this little cultural tid bit. We enjoyed our meal, shared in lively discussions, and left feeling a little heavy, a bit tipsy, and in the mood to walk back to the apartment. As we walked down a semi-familiar dusty side street next to a main thoroughfare, we encountered something shocking. Situated across the thoroughfare sat the flames of burning tires and police cars, the flames rising into the sky, silhouetting young Senegalese throwing rocks at the police cars.
Burning streets
Burning Streets 2
Like good frightened Westerners in an unknown place, we took a quick detour through some dark, powerless back roads, passed a bus stop and a basketball court, emerging on our familiar Liberté 6 street. Still without power, we felt much safer within our walls and curiously discussed what we had just witnessed. The next day, we discovered that these tire burnings reflected spontaneous youth protests to the continual power outages experienced for years now in Senegal. The very thing we too found so frustrating. Perhaps this is an appropriate beginning for a group here to support the World Social Forum, finding in our daily wanderings the real material struggles experienced by those with whom we find ourselves in global solidarity, those by whom the Social Forum process began and continues, those for whom the exploitative nature of colonialism, capitalism and governance has willfully extracted their resources and labor, leaving dust and desert, famine and disease, hardship and pain in its indifferent wake. It has also, it seems, left the will to rise up and struggle against those very forces, to find the strength to demand change, to bring about that change through action, dedication, protest, and revolution, to state collectively and through the Social Forum itself, "Another World is Possible!"
Footnotes:
[1] http://www.france24.com/en/20100403-protests-cloud-opening-wades-african...
[2] Group, O. B. (n.d.). The Report: Senegal 2008. Oxford Business Group.