15FEB2007 “Blackout pizza”

On Thursday evening, I went for a swim and then Patrick took Suki for a run. Afterwards, we were feeling too lazy to cook, so we called Makuti Villas and ordered some pizza (because of the Italian influence here, they actually have really good brick oven pizza, including artichoke hearts and spicy salami – better than 90% of pizza in the US). Thirty minutes later we hopped in the car to go pick up dinner.

As we were driving, we saw an electric pole that was spitting huge clouds of orange sparks from the top like a giant sparkler. We looked closer and Patrick said the insulator was on fire! You know you have a problem when the insulator is burning and spewing showers of sparks everywhere. There were people milling around at the bottom of the pole, one woman was selling something from a little table- peanuts or something. I guess she figured she might as well try to make a profit if there were going to be spectators. Or maybe she was just taking advantage of a little extra light. It was one of those situations that had an air of danger and you just have to see to believe. It left us feeling uneasy but utterly helpless to do anything. No such thing as the fire department here. Patrick wisely predicted that there would shortly be a blackout. Sure enough, just as we were pulling away with our pizza, all the lights went out in Kilifi and stayed out for most of the night.

Two good things about blackouts- the stars are even more spectacular than usual and it necessitates romantic candlelit pizza dinners…