The house awoke to a lighter mood this morning; the air was cooler.

In the evening, as engineers tried to fix the enormous satellite dish in the garden from which F. runs his internet business, a sharp wind poured down the drive leading from the street to the house, bringing with it black, swollen clouds. When I went into the street, pandemonium had broken out, with okadas (motorcycle taxis) racing faster than usual and danfo buses screeching the horn and the breaks alternately, racing to race the rain.

At Happy Barbing Salon (Grace Makes the Journey Great), the barber shop on the corner which also sells CDs, Happy's apprentice barber, China, asked that I snap him. No doubt in an act of bravado inspired by the bosses absence, he picked up his mobile phone, took a stance at the shop front as if he was the owner of the place and pretended to take a call; the Big Man.

Back at home, Mama Daniel stood beside me defiantly as I made a curry. "I want to learn," she said. I showed her how to cut onions, fry them in oil and add spices. Tomorrow, she said, she will write it all down. Mama Daniel can not cook; she is heavy handed and 'not known for her lightening speed' at noticing things like ripening plantain. But really she is just bored and never been shown how to do things.

This evening, as I write this, we enjoy silent electricity from the grid, for the first time since I have been here.