Who needs power when you've got Batman shoes?

The kids go to an afternoon "camp" run out of the home of a woman we know through Beer'n'Babies (more on this in another post), every Wednesday afternoon, 1:30-5pm. They have sensory play, go outside and run around, and bake things at the end. This last part is a genius ploy to help keep kids coming, as the parents become incontrovertibly addicted to the yummy baked goods. Last week it was molasses cookies; this week, cinnamon buns. Yum!

Those cinnamon buns saved us from dying of hunger after we got stuck in Atlanta-worthy traffic on the way back from one of these camp sessions. It has rained twice in the last 3 days--an unheard of thing during the dry season here--and the resultant traffic was horrific. Not having moved more than 4 feet in 30 minutes, we decided instead on plan B: dinner at a local restaurant. Fueled by cinnamon buns, this plan seemed like a brilliant idea. That is until we had ordered, and the power went out.

Things to know about Lilongwe: cash is king. Credit cards work more than they used to, but mostly only at Chipiku, our fab grocery store

and at some restaurants. We went to Buchanan's, https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g293811-d1214832-Reviews-Buchannan_s_Grill-Lilongwe_Central_Region.html

Advantages: chicken nuggets, wonderful gardens, frogs at night, and--you can pay with a credit card!
But when the power went out, I immediately thought: oh boy. Does the credit card machine work when the power is out? We had no cash, because we hadn't been planning on going to this impromptu dinner. Would we have to wash the dishes to make back all the imaginary Kwacha we had spent on this meal?

I asked the waiter, but he did the typical Malawian politeness thing of "nod and smile if you have no idea what someone says and say 'yes, Madam'" so I wasn't sure that he had understood me. Then the generator kicked in and the computer started to work before I could go further down the kwacha-less credit card anxiety hole.

The kids had to go to the bathroom. The generator powered the bar, the restaurant and the kitchen stove (thank goodness), but not the bathroom lights. It gets dark around 5:30 in Lilongwe, and there aren't many street lights, so it was hard to see anything in the bathroom. The glow from the hallway lit the area of interest just enough to enable successful completion of the task for two out of the three interested parties. Agnieszka freaked out and refused to go in; that's when Stas realized that his shoes still do light up, in spite of how beat up they are, and that they are in fact a perfect solution to a power-less restaurant bathroom. He proceeded to dance like a madman, stomping his feet, and light the way for his sister's toilet experience. We all laughed hysterically all the way back to the table. And then the power came back on, we had a wonderful dinner (my request for white wine interpreted as a glass of red notwithstanding), and drove back home in zero congestion.  No cinnamon buns survived the trip.