Life update from a sleepy city…
Car
After a hiatus of over a month, April the March is back and whole again! It (she? it?) was in bureaucratic limbo for three weeks.
When it came back, its homecoming was short-lived. It needed to be jumped twice, stalled while driving, and was having other electrical system issues. Trying to troubleshoot, I looked under the hood and spent about three hours reading up on batteries and alternators. It turned out to be an issue (battery fluid and a screw that needed to be tightened) that should’ve been obvious and cost $5 to fix. Yay!
One of the days it wasn’t starting, unfortunately, was the day I had to go to the Nigerian High Commission for a visa to attend a friend’s wedding. I had to borrow a car, but ended up having to use the backup keys which had a keychain that had “not functional” scribbled on them. Turns out they worked, just not with the driver’s seat door. Blessed with an excess of common sense, I never checked the passenger’s seat lock, but realised the trunk had a lock.
So I spent Monday morning going between the Nigerian High Commission and the fanciest banks in Lusaka climbing in and out of the trunk of an SUV.
Art
My friends and I spontaneously decided to audition for a play It’s a small cast, based on a Eugene O’Neill play, and I wish you could all come see it. It’s the most legit play I’ve ever been in (except for Seneca’s Medea possibly, but I was dressed all in black playing a pennywhistle in one scene so not sure if that counts) considering the others were a 5th-grade rendition of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and Kirkland Drama Society’s… I don’t really know what… last year that involved people eating entire oranges and bananas onstage and too much drinking, among other things.
It’s been great to be back creating something in an ensemble, and meeting new people here! It’s a wonderful group and even the dancing has been fun.
Besides that, I’ve been writing poetry. It’s getting increasingly weirder and it’s time to stop writing and edit.
Oh, I’ve also been reading half of books before they expire. Some books have better first halves than others. Wind-up Bird Chronicles for one. Will anything resolve?
Work
I was going to put a funny photo of a cat eating my notes from a training. But the notes had readable information on them. No cat photo.
I’m working on a survey again, along with a bunch of day-to-day things. It’s tiring. I’m learning a lot. I’m working on figuring out how much of the interesting bits of work I can publish on this blog, so stay tuned. We’ll be back on farms soon!
The funniest thing recently is having to switch between “the programme is being finalised” in some documents and “the program is being finalized” in others. In my amalgam of Englishes, I can go either way on the s and z (same with zee or zed) but like the shorter “program” et al. Against all sense, though, pry the “u” from “colour” out of my cold, dead hands.
Thoughts
Veganism. Living in a house with two vegans now. That does not mean I’m becoming a vegan, more that I’ve been considering the ethical dimensions of veganism. There are elegant Eastern philosophies regarding vegetarianism/veganism that don’t involve going into utilitarian places most people don’t want to go.
Ranked choice voting. It seems like a good idea?
Virtue ethics. I’m obsessed with grand unifying theories of everything. Was told by some friends a few months ago my fatal flaw is living and dying by my intellectual obsessions, which is not untrue.
So I’m only now realising what normal people probably realise at birth: grand unifying theories of everything usually have some fatal flaw, just like the humans who make them.
I like virtue ethics though. It seems like a good way to thinking about living life, trying to build character and virtue and become a person who flourishes and helps others to flourish. There’s the problem of “how do you know what human flourishing is?” but, it’s not necessary to know that perfectly to see some of the ways in which you’re failing to flourish or be good, and to then try to move towards being a person of character. To get to the place where I’ve run out of gaps between the person I am and the virtuous person I want to be is more than a lifelong project.
Labour migration: See below.
Miscellaneous
I entered the Economist’s Open Futures essay contest, because I foolishly figured I could write a good essay on migration in two days (I studied it in college, so I must be a *world expert*). It sucked up my entire weekend and wasn’t embarrassing, at least; I’ll publish it here after I lose. Hold me to publishing later this week on morality and increased migration, though, which was the first part of this essay and something I’ve recently read some more interesting articles on.
Sometimes I run for fun. Sometimes I run with people in a forest. I would like to do this more.
Another last-minute public holiday has been called so people can vote in the mayoral elections.
Here is a picture of a gelato store at a mall. Parents suggest pictures of everyday life in Lusaka more, which is a good point. I sometimes forget (because I live here, not because I was never guilty of this) Americans’ perception of Zambia and Africa as a whole can be monolithic, and me posting only pictures of goats doesn’t help. But yep, we have malls (lots of malls) and some gelato shops.
That’s all for now. Eat some gelato.