Grappling in the Dark

Nairobi is located just south of the equator. This means the days are pretty much 12 hours long, year round.

When the sun does go down around 6 pm, it gets very dark, very quickly.  There’s not much ambient city light. Most streets outside of the central business district or major arteries are unlit. In our neighborhood, streetlights are few and far between, and often not working. It’s a lot like living in the country.

Power outages are relatively frequent, especially during the rainy seasons, which occur twice a year. When they do come, the rains can be torrential, and this seems to quickly overwhelm the city power system.

We have a generator for such occasions. We didn’t choose it, it was generously provided by Britt’s employers. It is diesel powered and blue and sits squarely behind our house. It’s also far more powerful and expensive than we need, but we’re told not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The generator is set up to go on automatically when the city power goes out. But during a recent extended period without power (coinciding as it happened with the post-Sandy outages experienced by our friends and family along the US Eastern seaboard) I had it set to manual instead. So one night when the power went out, I fumbled my way through the dark and behind the house to turn the thing on.  

I was only a step away from the generator’s on-off switch when, suddenly, instead of moving forward, I found myself going downward. Actually, for the briefest of instances, it felt like I was suspended in mid-air – just like those cartoon characters when they run off a cliff and freeze before going straight down like a rock. It was an impression that must have come as part of the sheer surprise of finding a hole where the path should have been.

The hole was not very deep. It wasn’t an Alice-in-Wonderland sort of set up. But it was sort of deep, probably 16 inches or so. And it was just my size, in other words big enough so that I fit squarely into it. Had it been deeper, it could have swallowed me whole.

Luckily, I wasn’t hurt, only flustered. Who would put a hole in the middle of the path to the generator? The answer is: the technicians who’d installed the thing. In fact, mine was just one of four holes they’d dug with the intention of using them to anchor a sort of shed-like structure to protect the generator from the elements.

Pulling myself out, I made my way to the generator power switch and turned the thing on. Avoiding the hole on the way back, I got back into the house via the now lit kitchen. It was only then that I noticed the thick trail of mud I had created. It stretched through the kitchen door to the place where I was standing, and up the lower half of my body.

Once again, I felt like a cartoon character. And I did the only thing I could do in that situation. I laughed.

I laughed because it was the middle of the night and I was covered in mud. I laughed because I’d fallen into a hole that someone had dug and not refilled. I laughed because it seemed such an appropriate metaphor for a newly arrived stranger in a strange land.

Being a fledgling expat in Africa is exciting and rewarding. But it’s also full of surprises. You can’t get too comfortable or think you are in control.  Instead, you have to be flexible. You have to keep exploring and learning. Adapt, adjust, and be grateful for the luxury of running water when you are covered in mud.