It's Electric!

If you've ever spent any time in France, you know that besides cuisine, the favorite collective pastime is striking. People love taking to the streets to protest pretty much anything, and all the better if it results in major infrastructural mayhem. As a student in France, I once missed two months of classes because my university was on strike. The doors were piled high with desks and chairs, bonfires lit up the campus, and students who might not have actually known why they were striking in the first place, guarded the entrance to keep classes from taking place.

At the beginning of January, Reunion Island's power company went on strike. This resulted in staggered electricity outages around the island. First the West would be without power for 2 hours, then it would flip to the East. On and off every two hours, this continued for three days. Frankly I was impressed, primarily by the fact that no one batted an eye at the oddity of it all. By the third outage on the first day, I was going mental. Any kind of business--the grocery store, post office, or pharmacy, would open-close, open-close because as soon as the power was out, their computer systems went down. We lived in two hour surges of hustle: electricity back on-- RACE TO BUY TOILET PAPER. While it was down, I would cut a large pile of vegetables. The second power was back: RACE TO COOK DINNER. GO. stop. GO. stop. GO. Days of panic ensued.
On the second day of this madness, I was invited to my pal Susie's for a dinner prepared by her man friend, Joann. As soon as I arrived, BAM. Electricity down. Thanks to our head lamps (best purchase of the year), we were able to continue kitchen prep. Unfortunately, after that was done, we had nothing to do but sit twiddling our thumbs until electricity popped back on at midnight, enabling Joann to carry on with his culinary genius. We ate late into the night, alternatively by candle light, then lamp light, depending on what was happening with the power grid.

In the days following the strike, long after the nightmare was over, I couldn't stop twitching in nervous anticipation of another outage. The scarring was profound.