Randomness
Posted By Sika on June 13, 2008
Transport home the other night was running late and the sky was turning such interesting colors. Just above the plateau it was a dusky pearlescent mauve, the newly crescent moon suspended from the heavens like a boat sailing between the clouds. The moon glowed so that it seemed as if the shape had been cut from the fabric of the sky to reveal the light shining behind. I frequently think how lucky I am to be here, where the beauty impresses me daily.
I was sitting on my porch (the side one, since I basically pretend that my front door and porch don’t exist except as hiding places for the dogs.) I was writing a letter* and had to keep my head cocked to the side or I’d get a curly-headed shadow across the page. The cooling air had killed off most of the mosquitoes, so while it was a little chilly it was generally pleasant to be outside. This Malawian walking down my street just out of range of the porch lights (although I’m sure good Malawian eyes would’ve seen him just fine) starts singing, “bye, bye, bye.” At first I thought he was going to a rendition of that boy band song, but then instead he went into the James Blunt song, “Beautiful”: “As I walk on by, you can see from my face that I’m . . .” Long pause. I wondered which version of the song he learned. Was it the radio edit? But no, because after an interminable break, me waiting expectantly, I hear him warble, “fucking high.” I cracked up and had to go inside ‘til I got a hold of myself again.
ESCOM, our electric company, had an amazingly stellar couple days of bad service a little bit ago. The power went out a couple of times at work one day; once for a couple hours right before and during lunch and then again for 45 minutes or an hour in the afternoon. This on its own is unusual because the school is on the same or a similar line as the hospital and so the power rarely goes out. So anyway, I was reading some old lecture notes for my lectures I need to start in 2 weeks, when Jeremiah, the CAO**, tapped on my louvered window looking a bit dejected and asked if I was busy. He asked me if I wasn’t too hot, with the sun streaming directly into my window, but I told him if I wasn’t directly in the sun I was freezing. He was bored because he had been in the middle of writing a report when the power went out, crashing all his work. So he said he was going to go to the ESCOM offices and beat them.
“With a stick?” I asked.
“Even with my own fists,” he replied.
“Are you going to break them?” (And I wonder why David says I’m violent.)
“I’ll break their chins,” he answered.
The next day the power was out when I woke up (and there was apparently a power surge when it went out, since the main on my fuse box thingy was flipped when I woke up), and then it was out at work, too. ZSN and Matawale are on different lines, so I’m not sure if the power was out for all of Zomba or what. For me, at least, the power was out for 4.5 hours. Then it came on for 20 minutes than was out again. All in all, the power was out something like 6 times in 2 days. And whereas the power usually is out for maybe 40 minutes at the time, it was out for hours and hours. Stupid ESCOM.
*I write letters to anyone who writes to me or sends me packages. It’s been difficult to tell this since I haven’t been writing letters for the last few months, but no really, I do. This is what I like to call a Sika hint: as in, unsubtle as a brick.)
**Still love calling him that.
So, where’s my letter????