El Andalous - Power Cuts

My Lounge During a Power Cut

I’d noted to someone the other day that when I first came over here, power cuts were common. Indeed, when I first arrived in Hurghada to move over here, there was a power cut at the airport stopping the luggage carousels from working (what kind of country is this, I thought at the time). Now, however, we don’t really have them anymore.

Of course, as soon as I said that, we had two power cuts, two days running. They were only in El Andalous and the resort, respectively, though, I think, so more a fault in our electricity than to do with government cutting it.

The first one was right in the middle of me cooking my dinner. I’d taken out some frozen chilli con carne that I’d made on a previous occasion (it had frozen a bit peculiarly because it was very flat), poured a little bit of water over it since the sauce is usually a bit dry when it comes out of the freezer, and stuck it in the microwave and put the rice on to boil. A nice easy dinner that shouldn’t take long to prepare.

The chilli con carne was just whirring round in the microwave and the rice was just coming to the boil when the electricity went. It’s not so bad these days, as I’m prepared. I located my two solar lights – one I use for the bathroom which is pitch black when there’s no electricity, and the other one casts a reasonable amount of light in my lounge. I lit my candles, kicked my feet up on the sofa and read on my kindle.

There’s always a background Angst about whether the electricity will come on again at all and whether I’ll get to eat. Every time I put my supper on, I suddenly get really hungry, so with the power cut, I become acutely aware that I haven’t eaten and start fretting.

I’m not sure how long it took, maybe a couple of hours, but the electricity did come back on. I switched on the microwave, turned the ring on the hob back on to cook my rice. Ping! The microwave had finished its initial allocated time. I took out the chilli to see how it was doing only to find that it was actually a piece of steak steaming in residual water! How I can mistake a piece of steak for chilli con carne, I’m really not sure.

I didn’t want to waste the steak (I get really good steak from the butcher here), but it looked really pale and yucky. I wouldn’t normally have steak with rice, either. But I had to make do. I fried the steak and actually it came up not bad at all in the end. I added a healthy dosing of mixed herbs to the rice to make it a little less bland, and in the end it was a half-decent supper.

And then, the next morning, we had another unplanned power cut; this time it was our monthly planned cut while the resort has its electricity check, but they’d forgotten to tell us about it on this occasion. After the previous night’s events, I’d not thought to recharge my laptop, so it was rather annoying not to be able to spend my morning writing, which is my standard routine these days.

I thought I’d go round and pay a visit to Stephen and Kathryn, so I cycled over. Their car was outside, so it seemed they were in. I rang the doorbell. No reply. I tried again. No reply. I yelled. Nothing. I rang the doorbell. No reply. The security guard watched me and then explained that there was a power cut so the bell wouldn’t be working. Doh. I cycled back. At least I’d got some good exercise.

Since then, we haven’t had any more unforeseen cuts, but now I’ve said that, who knows!