Welcome to season eight of Do It Yourself, African Style! Due to the theme’s popularity last year, this season also opens with a firefighting episode. Once again, we’ll see our heavenly Father’s loving protection of His children in a land without the emergency services that the West enjoys.
It was Monday evening and I had just come home from work. Stephanie, the lady of the house, had returned from a medical appointment with her husband Boniface, and was with sixteen-year-old Leah watering her backyard garden. Nearby, Boniface and a worker discussed turning the henhouse into a rabbit hutch, while another worker bathed in our outhouse. The boys, Matthew (26) and Blaine (13), were preparing supper on our charcoal stove. Twenty-year-old Darcy was in her bedroom with a visiting cousin.
Matthew knew that his cell phone tended to heat up when charging. And as a college student, he was educated enough to understand the implications of that defect. Nevertheless, as he saved up for a new phone, he continued using his old one. On that fateful evening, he had left it charging on a table in his bedroom — next to a shelving unit full of his architecture notebooks and supplies.
From my adjacent bedroom, I heard the explosion. The boom and subsequent crackling sounded like a mango falling onto our metal roof and then rolling off it. I chided myself for being startled at a noise so familiar. Oblivious to the blaze six feet away, on the other side of the wall where I’d stacked 300 Bibles for women’s reading clubs, I leisurely unloaded my backpack and opened my windows.
Everyone outdoors was on the opposite side of the house from where smoke was billowing out of the boys’ window. But upon emerging from the outhouse after his bath, the worker glimpsed the disaster and told Boniface that the boys’ room was aflame. Boniface yelled to the family about the fire as he hurried toward the kitchen door. Stephanie collapsed on the ground in tears, and our faithful German shepherd ran to comfort her with kisses. Leah shouted at the girls’ window for anyone inside to come out of the house, then ran around the house to throw the remaining water in her garden bucket through the boys’ window towards the flames.
Meanwhile, in my bedroom, I began to sense that something was not right. I heard the alarm in Boniface’s voice and made out the word “fire”. Leaving my room to investigate, I had just smelled smoke when I was horrified by the unmistakable bright orange flickering filling the hairline crack between the boys’ closed door and its frame. Panicked, I fumbled with the knob for a moment, then gave up. It was in God’s mercy that I didn’t succeed in letting a rush of fresh air onto the blaze which was already consuming the combustibles in the shelving unit and licking across the table towards the door — and I was alone.
I wasn’t alone for long. As I entered the living room, I met Boniface and Matthew rushing in. They tried in vain to open the breaker box, where no breaker had yet been tripped. Darcy and her cousin scurried outside. My mind froze as I tried to think of what to do. Abandoning the still-live breaker box, the men ran to the boys’ bedroom door and managed to open it. Smoke filled the hallway as Boniface warned Matthew to move away from the danger. The worker who’d sounded the alarm arrived to assist, along with the neighbor who summoned us a year ago to attend his wife’s emergency childbirth. I thought of the possessions I’d lose if the flame spread to my room. Hysterical, I cried out for God’s help.
When Boniface shouted to bring water, I sprang into action. That was something I could do! The men ran outside where they met Leah refilling her pail at the spigot, and she continued filling other nearby containers as they formed a bucket brigade. In the kitchen, I collected large bottles of water from the refrigerator and counters and ferried them to Boniface in the hall. He repeatedly stepped into the boys’ room to throw water at the blaze and emerged sputtering from the smoke. Matthew used a fork to pry open the breaker box and turned off all the breakers. That removed our illumination except for the twilight peeking in through the windows, and reduced the water pressure at the faucets, but by that time the flames were nearly extinguished — and thankfully no one had been electrocuted in the process.
As Boniface caught his breath, we checked the rest of the house. Though the boys’ side of the wall between our rooms was burned black, my bedroom was untouched. How I thank God that our home is made of concrete! Even the smoke that reached other rooms didn’t stay for long or damage anything.
For the next hour, I held flashlights for the cleanup effort. The men carried the charred, soggy contents of the boys’ room outside as Boniface tossed water on anything that appeared to still be smoldering. Matthew cut the melted screen from the window. He and Blaine sloshed towels around on the tile floor and wrung them out into buckets, then finished the job with a broom and a mop.
Boniface switched the unaffected breakers back on and the girls finished preparing supper. Matthew and I each received a strong electric shock from touching our freezer, so we unplugged it. After dinner and devotions, our family retired for the evening both grateful for God’s protection and traumatized by our experience. The pitter-patter of raindrops on the roof soon sent me bolting from my bed to the window: I didn’t want to mistake another danger for something dropping onto the roof!
As I left for work the next morning, I found Matthew and Blaine outside as pictured here, rummaging through the rubble to discover what was salvageable. Matthew lost most of his architectural college supplies, some clothes, and a stash of cash. Darcy’s computer which he had been borrowing was also burned. On the other hand, most of Blaine’s belongings, stored on a shelf in the opposite corner of the room from Matthew’s, were unscathed. Both young men showed a mature attitude of giving thanks in all things, even in the face of their loss.