Resilience (by Karen)

When we moved to our new place in January, we were thrilled to have a full kitchen, complete with stove and oven. But Eric was hankering after a grill to roast eggplants for baba ghanouj, so R got us this little one and a bag of charcoal.

This is what most Congolese use to cook all the time – more about the charcoal economy in another post.

Mmm ... smoky eggplant!

Fresh pita from Nazem, the Lebanese bakery

Tasty baba ghanouj!

We soon realized we weren’t going to use all that charcoal, and since the nights can be cold (even more so now), we let T, our night watchman, use the brasero (the hibachi-type thing) and charcoal to keep warm.

However, when the power goes out here, the generator doesn’t always get turned on, and if it is turned on, it’s only at night, and it’s only strong enough to run the lightbulbs and (yay!) the wifi router. No electric kettle, no stove or oven. So, a few weeks after its eggplant debut, the brasero was called back into service for dinner.

Resilience

We’ve only had one more brasero dinner since then, since this is not Eric’s favorite way to cook, and he’d rather get take-out from the yummy Lebanese KFC (KFC = Katanga Fried Chicken, but we usually get their falafel or shawarma) or from Galito’s.

Over the past month, we’ve had several days with only a few hours of power and nights with none at all. With no reservoir of hot bath water from the electric water heater, we’ve put the brasero to use to heat water for our morning baths and coffee. Too cold these days (or we’ve gotten too soft?) for a cold-water bucket bath!