Power out in Ribe

You may (or may not) have noticed our slight absense, and perhaps noticed my (Chris) status updates on twitter/facebook... there was a power black-out all last week. We tried to roll with it and further experience how many of the locals here live (we've now done water shortages and extended time without power, and pray that they don't happen at the same time). However, I wonder if it is even more difficult for us than others around us for the fact that we did not grow up learning how to deal with it!

Exactly one week ago from this moment was not unlike this evening; we returned to Ribe from visiting friends and probably spent a little time online. We had bought meat and other cold items, like yogurt and stored them in the fridge. Then, Monday morning we woke to no electricity! We were just recovering from some upset stomachs from eating suspect foods during the 3 day power outage the week before, so although we were hoping to save the meat a couple days since we enjoyed some over the weekend in Mombasa, we were not going to risk this food going bad!

Monday night, we fixed up some BBQ ribs on a Kenya-style grill. Yes, a charcoal jiko with a wire grate on top. Lesley also made the BBQ sauce from scratch and it was amazing!

We also ate the yogurt much quicker than planned, and the other meat was ground beef, which we browned a bit each night until we made spaghetti on Wednesday night.

Otherwise, in the evenings, we pretty much just watched the flames jumping on the candles, talked quite a bit more than usual, and played cards. Check out the empty peanut butter jar hurricane Lesley devised with a little sand in the bottom to hold the candle up.