On the way back from Lilongwe we got stopped for speeding. It was quite hilarious--they actually had this laser speed gun and waved us over (we were probably doing 130 in a 50, since we'd just entered a town…that’s actually not unusual speeds around here). The whole thing would have been a total non-issue had C not forgotten her license. That made things interesting. You could tell she was working every angle (oh, we were just in giving a presentation to ministers of all the different ministries of government; it's a translation issue…I can’t tell how fast I’m going; etc.). No budging. Some guy sort of told her to give him some money, so when she got pulled back into the police car to write up what ended up being this really extensive report (it was all handwritten, including the form itself), she pulled out money. This was now a new cop who was like, "are you trying to bribe me? Who told you that?" She’s all, "oh no, in my country, you can pay on the spot. I wasn’t trying to bribe you at all!" So she got stuck having to go to court next week and probably getting this other cop in trouble. But as the sign on the doors at the municipal building in town say, this is a no corruption zone (see flickr). It was pretty funny to watch the guys play with this laser gun while C was getting her ticket, though—it was like watching kids on christmas morning with a new toy.
Thursday is a national holiday: Freedom Day. I’ve been asking around if anything happens, and apparently there’s no celebration. I’m totally confused by it--everything is still open, everyone works, there are no events or anything. The guy at Joe's Motel was laughing at me and my confusion about it. I asked him what one does to celebrate on the day and he responded, "You wake up and remember you’re free. Then you go to work." It was pretty funny at first in how matter of fact it was. Then I realized how sad it sort of is. I think it's more an issue of needing to work: unemployment is so bad that you can’t not work. I suppose it could just as well be that these holidays just aren’t big deals everywhere. This girl who’s with us for a few days (another grad student; she’s Tanzanian, from Kenya, studying here) said that people often work on Independence Day in Kenya. Ben was mentioning that on Liberation Day (or some equivalent) in Zambia, all that happened was that he was going through town and got heckeled by a group of drunk guys at 5pm. I noted that it's actually pretty telling that they were free enough to heckle the white dude on the bike—any shit they gave him was actually a pretty good celebration of their liberties, as far as I can see. Maybe I'm just conditioned by Americans' full enjoyment of days off on national holidays, especially when they fall on Mondays which they so often do.
I had an interesting conversation on the drive into town with our study manager about the power rationing. It's becoming like second nature already. It's certainly not worth getting worked up about. You just have to have anything you want fully charged all the time and go with it. It’s supposed to be around the same time everyday, but it definitely isn't. So anywhere between 9 and 1, the power is bound to go out for at least an hour, probably 2 without warning. We were talking about how much of an impediment the power situation is, and I forget how central electricity is at the macro level as well. I'm usually too annoyed by not having it for me that I forget that in the big picture, no one is going to invest here if they can't get the electricity they need. And there's apparently no move toward privatization of the system itself, which is strange. Someone could make a ton of money by building up this system. This country is just too damn poor to do anything about it themselves.
Thursday is a national holiday: Freedom Day. I’ve been asking around if anything happens, and apparently there’s no celebration. I’m totally confused by it--everything is still open, everyone works, there are no events or anything. The guy at Joe's Motel was laughing at me and my confusion about it. I asked him what one does to celebrate on the day and he responded, "You wake up and remember you’re free. Then you go to work." It was pretty funny at first in how matter of fact it was. Then I realized how sad it sort of is. I think it's more an issue of needing to work: unemployment is so bad that you can’t not work. I suppose it could just as well be that these holidays just aren’t big deals everywhere. This girl who’s with us for a few days (another grad student; she’s Tanzanian, from Kenya, studying here) said that people often work on Independence Day in Kenya. Ben was mentioning that on Liberation Day (or some equivalent) in Zambia, all that happened was that he was going through town and got heckeled by a group of drunk guys at 5pm. I noted that it's actually pretty telling that they were free enough to heckle the white dude on the bike—any shit they gave him was actually a pretty good celebration of their liberties, as far as I can see. Maybe I'm just conditioned by Americans' full enjoyment of days off on national holidays, especially when they fall on Mondays which they so often do.
I had an interesting conversation on the drive into town with our study manager about the power rationing. It's becoming like second nature already. It's certainly not worth getting worked up about. You just have to have anything you want fully charged all the time and go with it. It’s supposed to be around the same time everyday, but it definitely isn't. So anywhere between 9 and 1, the power is bound to go out for at least an hour, probably 2 without warning. We were talking about how much of an impediment the power situation is, and I forget how central electricity is at the macro level as well. I'm usually too annoyed by not having it for me that I forget that in the big picture, no one is going to invest here if they can't get the electricity they need. And there's apparently no move toward privatization of the system itself, which is strange. Someone could make a ton of money by building up this system. This country is just too damn poor to do anything about it themselves.
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