Arusha, Monday, February 20, 2017

The electricity went off in the early morning, and we remained without power most of the day.  Last year, Mazo had bought a lovely little cooker with only one electric burner and three gas burners, so even when the power is off, we can boil water and cook. It’s an incredible luxury; I can have my cup of coffee when I wake up, which makes the whole day go better. The main problem with a power outage is that it seems to affect the internet connection here as well, so often we have that to whine about, too.

Soon after breakfast, we decided to go back to the Airtel office downtown in another effort to figure out what is not working with my stick modem.  Ray drove us to the office and waited while we went in. By now they know us well there, so our favorite technician met us at the door and took us aside to check out my computer and the modem.  He concluded that it was the old modem stick into which John and put the new chip that was the problem. So, we ended up buying a new modem stick, and after some frustrating efforts to get everything installed, our problem seemed solved. Having the stick means that I should be able to be online even when the internet here at Kundayo is off and that I can connect to the internet from inside our apartment, which I cannot do otherwise.

There is a mini Masai market on the sidewalks outside the Airtel office, and as we stepped out to look for Ray, we were besieged by vendors. I hate having to brush aside people who are just trying their best to make a marginal living, but one cannot give in and buy something from everyone every time, of course. One older man told me his name was Isaiah Paul, and he needed to sell me a batik so he would have money to buy food. Another older woman who was selling Masai beads sandals called for me to “help support” her. Since I already have more bad African batiks than I can use or give away, I turned to the woman and began bargaining for sandals.  In the end, I paid her about 50% more for a pair than it would have cost me at our neighborhood sandal workshop, but the money she got from me may have been the only money she earned all day.

After lunch, the electricity came back on, so I was feeling very positive about life and decided to see if Morning Joe was on MSNBC. It was, and just as I was beginning to tune in to what the news stories for the day were, the TV went mute. We tried every trick we could think of with the remotes and connections, but there was no more sound. The picture was fine, so we read crawlers for awhile, but a lot is not said in those crawlers and we cannot read lips. John thinks the TV itself is broken, so we will have to see if Mazo can exchange ours for one that is still functioning.

Dinner was chicken and noodles à la Janet, made with ramen noodles and a special broth/sauce, and sautéed zucchini, which John had bought thinking they were cucumbers.  The TV was still mute, but the electric refrigerator was running, and I thought about how many things we now feel we need which we never even knew about for most of our years in Africa. Maybe I’m just being nostalgic, but I truly think I enjoyed the simpler life in the Congo more than I do this quasi-modern society. I doubt, however, that John and I will ever be able to live so remotely again.