car and food

Car just required a change of battery, although there was a terrible moment with the alternator - the battery replacement guy thought it might be overcharging the battery, but it looked like it was just doing the old one that needed replacement.

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I've been struggling to write this urban fantasy - I think I'm getting too bogged down in the details. Also, the first scene is actually out in a country area, so not really the gritty darkness of city life... The heroine is fighting elves, though, so I guess that's something...

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Day 7 of the Ration Challenge: breakfast was lentil patties (ordinary), lunch was fried rice (okay) and flatbread (freaking amazing) and dinner will be falafels and probably more fried rice.

A neighbour said I'd lost weight when she walked by yesterday. Nice, but I didn't bother weighing myself before the challenge - I wasn't going to make it important.

I guess, like thinking about the American concentration camps at the border, it's at once both difficult and daunting to consider that this is someone's life, day after day, week after week, month after month. And while there's hope for the children in detention down on the US-Mexico border, there's very little for the refugees in the refugee camps.

So, in spite of my desire for something nice and tasty; there's also a hint of bittersweet to returning to my usual diet.

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A few links today:

SBS Australia: Portraits of refugee children

The Guardian: How The Taste Of Home Sustained My Refugee Parents

The Atlantic: Logical Conclusions to the mystery of MH370

Medium: Half of Americans Are Effectively Poor

"real food for real people"

So.

The worst thing about this challenge has been seeing how innately racist some of the people doing the challenge are.

The FB group for the last couple of days has been full of posts about going back to 'real food' or 'proper food' or 'things you can actually eat', because rice, lentils, chickpeas, and sardines (also: vegetable oil and flour) are, apparently, not food eaten by real or proper people.

Which...I shouldn't have to explain that here. I feel like I want to do that over there thoug.

Language matters. We know the difference between 'asylum-seekers' and 'refugees' vs 'queue-jumpers' and 'illegals'. Implying that the food we've been eating isn't 'real food' lays a stigma on the people stuck eating these rations day after day after day. After a while of having to eat this, refugees probably don't feel very 'real' either - caught in that no-man's-land between the life they used to have back home and the life that western governments very much don't want to allow them.

I'm trying to find a way to bring this up as politely and clearly as possible. I know there will be many people who'll dismiss this as an issue, because OMG AREN'T YOU TRIGGERED but...there might be a few people who will at least think about what they're casually Othering and the effect that has on both their perspective and the perspective of people around them.

I wonder...several of the people I saw posting about their stuff complained that they weren't getting any fundraising. But...if your underlying attitude isn't innately empathetic to refugees and people who aren't like you, then people probably aren't going to take your sudden desire to 'help' refugees very seriously.