Dark nights in Dakar

I started this morning crouched over a bucket of water. The water has been cut in Dakar—an unusual occurrence, residents assure me—and the woman who owns the villa where I live had the foresight to fill buckets early this morning.

It is a surprisingly natural thing, this bathing out of a bucket, and I laughed to myself when I realized my body had naturally assumed the posture I’ve seen on women washing beside the road.

If losing running water is rare, blackouts are more common, those daily cuts to the power system that leave us without fans, in the stifling heat, sometimes in the dark. When the cuts come at night, everyone is exasperated. People condemn the power company, the corrupt government, the oil oligarchy. They throw up their hands in frustration, and then they bring out the flashlights.

If the meal has already started, or if my host family is just sitting down to eat, then we stay where we are, gathered around a communal plate on the living room floor. The TV, for once, is silent. The fan overhead is still, and the heat in the room suddenly thickens, condenses. If we have not sat down to eat, we will go upstairs to the rooftop, where the air moves and the song from the muezzin in the mosque across the street can be heard clearly.

When I first arrived, during Ramadan, we once ate on the rooftop as soon as the sun set. The air still carried a trace of pink. We dipped our spoons into the platter of rice and fish, and I listened as the Senegalese talked politics and religion. The night darkened around us and a plane passed overhead, so close I thought I might run a hand along its belly if I just raised an arm. A current of hot air circulated in the plane’s wake and a low moan whirled through the archways of neighboring buildings like a passing djinn.

On other powerless nights we sat gathered in the living room long after the meal had been eaten, longer even than the rechargeable batteries for the flashlights could last. The bulbs slowly dimmed until we were sitting in blackness, and still we stayed. The madam’s brother—a professor at the university—and her sister visiting from France lead the debate about women’s role in the Koran. The father of the house hotly disputed their opinions. There was much laughter and ribbing.

The dark, close quarters of a night without electricity lend themselves to profound conversations. The streets, even, feel more intimate, and people bring chairs to sit in the sandy back alleyways between their homes. There is a collective relaxing, a letting go into the quiet of the powerless night. At any rate, the electricity will come back—perhaps in a few hours, perhaps in the morning—and there is no sense worrying in the mean time.

I hope the same can be said for the water.