Yesterday, just as I finished the last post, there were two huge explosions outside. It sounded like a car backfiring twice, but much deeper, so that the walls seemed to shake a little and the lights started flickering. All of us sitting in the office slid off our headphones and looked at each other, and then went back to our work. About 20 minutes later BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, sounding like it was right outside the front door. It was hard to tell if there were explosions of light in the air or if the lights were just flicking on and off really fast, but the electricity wasn’t going down as the UPS machines weren’t beeping.

So we left the house and peeked out the gate into the street, and saw a 2 foot wide dirt hole with burning wires sticking out of it, and lots of black smoke. There’d obviously been some sort of electrical explosion literally 6 inches from our wall (and 1 foot from our pool—good thing it’s broken and we weren’t in it). As we stood around wondering what to do some sort of government SUV pulled up and a couple men hopped out to look at it. In typical Congolese manner (everyone loves to be involved) a crowd started gathering, but no one seemed to know what to do. Someone half-heartedly kicked dirt on the fire. Most people just stared at the confused group of white people. Our papas told us to turn our electricity off, which meant no more working, or running water, or opening the fridge, or air conditioning. Power outages sound like so much fun until you realize what they mean.

There are exposed electrical wires all over Kinshasa, and I believe it when people tell me electrocution is a leading cause of death every time there are rainstorms. From what I’ve experienced electrical wiring in Kinshasa is another example of a city that was on the rise in the 1970s with new technology and architecture, which then suffered so much war and pillaging and governemental changes that there has been no infrastructure to maintain anything. The way to live is to wait until something is broken and then hope you can find the skills and the bits and pieces to put it back together again. Or in our case, avoid the gaping wires outside the front gate whenever there’s a rainstorm.