Blackout

The powers been out for two days now. I read that during New York's last extended blackout millions in food spoiled: torrents of water rushing out the door of the walk in freezers of posh hot spots. The only refridgerator in Talai is the coke cooler and I've never seen that plugged in.
At home, a lack of internet, TV, cell service, microwave oven and electric stove would mean a dinner of tuna fish sandwiches and carrot sticks, a half hour of staring at one another over old Christmas candles and then early bedtime.
In rural Africa, life continues pretty much as usual.
Electricity has yet to gain the daily currency of necessity here. The radios and TVs, the electric lights, they are conveniences whose absence tonight reveals a still vibrant life.
The guys next door are talking and laughing together, the family two doors down is singing songs. In the next compound I can hear kids playing hide and seek in the garden.
In short, they are doing all the things that people used to do before the effort required for imagination and conversation became greater than we cared to expend.
Of course, they already have early symptoms of our illness: the silent stare of the TV dinner. The non-improvisible evening built around scheduled reruns of "Walker: Texas Ranger." And they've only had a taste of the effortless and seamless distraction possible from that plug on the wall.
You can see the stars tonight. You can see them every night, actually. When I stop in the middle of the road to stare up at them or sit out on my front porch, chair tipped back head on the window sill, Kenyans ask me what I see. Whats so interesting?
How can I explain?
No one here can conceive that someday they'll be gone, dimmed behind the amber orange of street lights over empty parking lots. No one here enjoys blackouts.
Except me.