Pineapple and Power Outages

Here in Dar, the electricity is… less than reliable. (To my friends in Zanzibar and the Chalbi Desert, I’m not complaining. I’m just learning a new phrase… add “Africa always Wins” to the “TIA” slogan bin.)



We’ll be at school, and the power will just go off for no reason. (My students in the States used to scream and say, “Yeah, no more school.” But then the power would always come back on.) Here, nobody even skips a beat. The power goes out and you pull your book a little closer to your face, your chair a little closer to the window, and move the now useless PowerPoint projector out of the way.


When the electricity goes off at school, we can count on the fact that the electric will be out on the teacher compound across the street as well. Two days ago, we got home and half of our house had gone out, including my bedroom, the stove and the refrigerator. (We had chocolate for dinner that night… Cadbury and Nutella.) Yesterday, the power was off while we were at school, so we went shopping for fruits and veggies to eat for dinner that required no cooking. By the time team and teacher swim was over, our power was back on. So, we decided to make a semi-Hawaiian-pineapple-tomato-casserole-thing. We had a Cassava root (a tuber that is popular in cooking here because it’s big and starchy, which my housemates thought was a sweet potato when they bought it) that we sliced, fried and layered in the bottom of a cake pan. Then, we sliced fresh pineapple on top, added sliced tomato, gouda cheese and fresh ginger, cinnamon and garlic. (a lot of this was done by candlelight because the power was on, off, on, off… and off again.) The power came back on as we finished, so we put it in the oven and waited… and waited… and waited. Finally, we said, “Okay it should only take a couple of more minutes.” Off again. “Okay… I guess we’re eating it now.” In the middle of dinner, some of the other teachers stumbled their way to our house, using candles and flashlights (torches) and joined our “romantic dinner for two.” On again. Just in time for us to realize that we had burned the plantains because the oven had held the heat.


After dinner, we all headed for bed. As I was getting in the shower, the power went off again. Clare starts screaming, “Help! I’m on the landing! I can’t see anything!” “Umm… I can’t come… I’m, uhh, in the bathroom,” I responded. Clare, being the helpful, caring roommate that she is, said “Okay, hold on.” She groped her way down the stairs to the kitchen and our Emergency candles. I can’t hear much, so I’m stumbling around my own room looking for my lighter to light my emergency candles when I see a strange glow coming from the hallway. It’s Clare, who has gone downstairs and is bringing me an emergency candle! I start screaming, “Stop! Stop!” She thinks something is wrong, so she starts walking faster, “Kate? Are you okay? I’m almost there!” I’m finally panicked enough to scream, “No! Stop! I don’t have any clothes on!!!” After a long pause, in which I’m trying to figure out how to hide behind a mosquito net then giving up once I realize that this is a lost cause, Clare starts giggling. “What?” she exclaims in her ever proper English accent. “I was changing out of my swimsuit when the power went out and I couldn’t see anything to put on.” At this point, we’re both laughing hysterically.


Suddenly, Clare’s phone chirps… it’s one of our teacher neighbors with a text: “I can hear you guys giggling. What’s so funny?”