I mentioned gas cylinder above, and one may be tempted to think we used propane gas for cooking in our homes. Far from it. At Bhachu’s hardware, that was where we first saw a gas cylinder. There were only two kinds. Afri Gas from Shell Petroleum Company, and Agip Gas from Agip. Those were the tall 15 kg cylinders, both navy blue in color.
You know how stories circulate about new things that people are not familiar with. Propane Gas was one of those. We heard stories of how the cylinders explode in the midst of cooking, blowing everybody and everything into pieces and burning houses to the ground. To an OlKalou audience, this fear was real because the only fire we knew was the natural kind that we made ourselves with firewood. We used it for our purposes of cooking and warming the house, controlling the fire to the intensity we desired and letting it burn down to embers when we were done. Our brains could therefore not fathom a “fire” that comes in a cylinder. How can that be? How can it not be dangerous?
