Last night in Soroti

There I was, my last night in Soroti for a few weeks. I thought I'd be feeling sentimental or something. Instead I just felt mental and I found myself counting down the minutes. Power was out all day so when it came on that evening I was pleasantly surprised. I was making myself a milk shake for dinner after a very full day of getting a huge list of stuff done and feeling pretty pleased with the world. Then the power cut out again. I found the lantern in the dark and discovered that it didn't have any kerosene in it. So filled it and trimmed it and got it lit. Back to the blender to find that now all I had was some rapidly warming milk in a puddle of coco and sugar. Yuck. But that wasn't enough to wreck my evening. Heck, what was I thinking any way?! Milkshake in Soroti? Not likely. I could just wait until I got back to the states. It was then that the cat took off after the lizard that jumped out of the compost bucket that I was pouring my milk soup out into. The dog freaked out thinking that the cat was getting some food and she wanted her fair share so she jumped up on the chair to see what had the cat so excited. Well, the cat took off, knocking the bottle of kerosine off the table and all over the dog. While I tried to simultaneously blow out the candles, turn off the lantern and get the blasted dog off the chair the bottle of paraffin rolled across the floor spilling the remainder of its contents from one end of the room to the other. In the now very dark room I managed to get the rather worked up, stupid dog outside but not before she made three laps around the room tracking kerosine everywhere. Both the lizard and the cat had disappeared before I managed to find my one working flashlight. A few minutes later found me unsuccessfully mopping the floor. I tried adding omo (laundry soap) to the mop water but still felt like I was just smearing the paraffin around and it just made the mop harder to wring out. Besides I was getting a monster headache from the fumes and trying to hold the flashlight between my shoulder and cheek (have you ever tried to mop by flashlight?!) I eventually gave up and retreated from the overwhelming mess, outside to the gazebo with my book to let the house air out. The mosquitoes were eating me alive but I didn't want to try to find my bug spray in the dark so I decided to suck it up. I'd only been reading a few minutes when the flashlight batteries quit. So I just sat in the dark calculating how many minutes until I fly and wondering what I'd do with all that extra sanity I was going to have.