Black-Out Box #3

The electricity has been going on and off for the past several days. Sometimes, it will only be off for 20-30 minutes. Other times, it is out for 4-5 hours. Monday night it went out right around dinner time, and when the power goes out after sun-down, our house has the tradition of pulling out our “Black-Out Box” and enjoying in some unpredictable fun.

Our Black-Out Box is an old US Postal Service Flat Rate Shipping Box decorated by me with comic strips and magazine clippings. (It turned out quite nicely if I may say so myself.) During our first Black-Out, our community decided to create the box by writing down short suggestions, challenges, games, or dares for us to draw out of the box whenever the power goes out. We’ve already used it twice, both times being huge successes.

During the first Black-Out, the piece of paper that was pulled from the box told us to play “Kat’s Spice Game.” None of us knew what that meant, so Kat explained that we would gather 6-7 different spices from our spice rack. Each of us would then take turns closing our eyes as someone else holds each of the 7 spices in front of our nose. Whoever could identify the most spices by the scent wins. It sounds pretty lame, right? It actually turned out to be an hour and a half of complete fun! During the second Black-Out, we pulled the suggestion for Mad Gabs out of the box. Some of us didn’t know how to play, and after it was first explained, Molly actually exclaimed, “That doesn’t really sounds like any fun at all.” And it’s true, if you read the description of the game, it sounds absolutely unexciting. But once again, despite all doubts, we had another evening of laughter, giggling, and good times.

Unfortunately, when the power went out on Monday, a few community members had some other things they needed to take care of including a trip to the bore-hole for the school. (Our school is also out of water!) So we didn’t get to make use of our Black-Out Box. However, ESCOM (Electrical Service Company of Malawi) would not let us down; shortly before dinner, our power went out once again last night!

We ate our dinner by candlelight, a few of people sharing plates or eating right out of the serving bowls since we are still without water. And then after dinner finished, we grabbed the Black-Out Box and pulled out a piece of paper. The first one was qualified. It read “Unless there is a full moon, go to Sand Stadium and enjoy a night under the stars.” Sand Stadium is the football pitch (AKA a soccer field), which earns that name because there is no grass, only sand. Since there just so happened to be a full moon last night, we threw that one back in and pulled out another. It read “Charades!” Alright; this was pretty straight forward. We were going to play charades. But first, a few of us had some small tasks to accomplish before we started anything.

Without electricity, we had no fan-power to move the air around in our house, so the heavy heat was quickly draining all of our energy. A few people drifted off from the common room, and those who were still around were not feeling too excited about playing charades. After about a half-hour or so, we all found ourselves in our common room, and there were a few suggestions of picking something else out of the box, since acting out various charades did not sound like an appealing activity in the stuffy warmth of our house. But, no, we decided to stick with our draw, and to push through it. None of us wanted to play the spice game, and Molly had absolute doubt in the funness level of Mad Gabs, but both of those proved to be excellent Black-Out activities. We pushed ahead.

It was not long after that we were cracking up watching each other jump and gesture in attempts to get our teammates to guess our word. The Black-Out Box was once again a huge success. And it’s making me realize how valuable it is to set aside all of the “important” things we normally have to do so that we can spend some silly time with those around us. And it helps a lot when something like a black-out or storm forces us to do it. It’s funny to consider the fact that we are gifted here in the sense that black-outs happen a few times a month.