Tales by candlelight

If it seems like I have beaten this electricity issue to death, please forgive me. Electricity in Shasha, Lagos has definitely improved a great deal in the past month or two. We can count on having power at least from 12 midnight until about 5.00am. Sometimes the Power Holding Company of Nigeria is even more benevolent and the power stays on until noon. So I'm definitely not complaining, in case someone from the PHCN office in Shasha is reading and thinks I'm ungrateful.

I have come to realise that I need to be extra vigilant when there is no light or get a super-powerful pair of glasses. Earlier this year, my working hours started much earlier than they do now which meant getting dressed by candlelight. One morning, I put on my makeup and rushed out to catch the BRT bus. I noticed that a few people stared at me a little longer than usual. I must be looking super-cute this morning, I thought. When I got to my office, I went to the bathroom first.

I glanced in the mirror and stopped short. My eyebrows were red. In the candlelight, I had accidentally used my crimson lip liner to do up my brows. There might be some complexions that red eyebrows work for, but certainly not mine. I grabbed some tissue paper and furiously rubbed at my brows before anyone from work saw them.

But that wasn't the end. The other day, as dusk approached, I spotted a cockroach in my living room. I rushed to my bedroom to grab a can of insecticide (I could have used a shoe but I can't bear to smear bug juice on my floor). I hurried back to the living room and let the canister loose on the sucker. One of the roach's feelers went limp but it continued on its merry way. Now I'm used to the furious shaking, then the death race that occurs when you douse a roach with insecticide so I took a curious look at the canister I was holding, thinking I had pointed the sprayer in the wrong direction. Well, lo and behold, I was not holding insecticide.

In the semi-darkness, I had grabbed hairspray instead. So now my roach was not only alive, but was also sporting a luxurious sheen. I ran back for the insecticide. As I watched the roach die, I wondered what would happen if I accidentally doused my hair with insecticide. I have since decided that the place for insecticide is definitely not in the bedroom, beside the hairspray