Power Outages

One of the regularly irregular adventures life in Lusaka brings is intermittent power outages.  They seem to happen randomly, in different areas of the city, and for varying lengths of time. There have been a few days when Chrys and I have headed off to work with the lights on, and walk in late in the day to find out  there’s been no power in the home neighborhood most of the day.  On another night we’d be eating dinner and the lights blink and go out.  Once Chrys got caught in the shower and had to finish by candlelight.  So far, the outages have not seriously hampered our proceedings, but it does add an interesting level of mystery to each day!  Chrys mentions that the city does something called “load shedding” to help manage supply and demand…these outages, especially with the very hot weather we are having now, would make sense (though I doubt many people here have air conditioning).

Hair Plaiting

I have always been fascinated by the elaborate braiding that many African women (and some African American women) have done to their hair.  Marjory, our neighbor, recently had a young woman come over and do her hair in a beautiful crown of braids, and I discovered that some of the effect is created using hair extensions.  In Marjory’s case, the woman used both a color extension close to Marjory’s own hair color, and a much lighter brown color for some of the braids – the effect is lovely.  Now I have to decide if I should let these guys loose on MY hair!!!  (mmm…NOT).

Cookin’ American with Janet

Janet is Chrys’s Mom’s caregiver – but she also does the cooking for the household.  I have had the chance to try some of the more traditional Zambian foods such as a spiced amalgam of local vegetables with white rice,  beef that is extremely well-cooked and salted, roasted chicken, stewed beans, and a few still to come (working up to shema and kapenta).   Chrys and I thought that it was time to try out an old American favorite – spaghetti with meat sauce – and see how that went over with the household. We rounded up “minced meat” (aka ground beef), onions, garlic, fresh tomatoes (these and green beans all grow well here), basic tomato sauce, pasta, and rather elegant hard parmesan cheese and served it up – BIG hit!  So, last night – as an end of the week treat, Janet and I cooked this again together. She wanted to learn exactly how to replicate it – talk about “knowledge transfer”!  We did have a very nice feast and now Janet is on the hook to cook it solo next go around.

Break in at the Cube

Unfortunately we got a call this morning that the Cube office had been broken into last night (Friday), sometime after everyone left for the three day weekend (Sunday is Zambian Independence Day so Monday is off).  Someone broke a back window.  We still don’t know what was taken – a police report is being done today and the staff will take inventory on Tuesday when everyone is back. 

Tuesday Update: Looks like nothing was stolen…may well have been an accidental window break.  Thank goodness.

More to come –

E