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one of the best parts about moving was that it forced us to consolidate, simplify, get rid of all of our crap. our one-bedroom apartment wasn’t so big, but anytime you live someplace for 3 years, you manage to accumulate a lot of stuff you don’t really need. i had all four chicken little bobbleheads from frosted flakes. stuff like that. even though we didn’t really start packing for africa until a couple days before we left, we spent over a month making trips to the goodwill, shredding papers we didn’t need and throwing away anything that didn’t have an obvious home. we filled a 5×10 storage unit with all the stuff that we left behind. so the storage unit and the 8 bags we checked (at $190 per for the four extras) is everything we own. it felt good to know that i didn’t have anything that i didn’t want. sounds obvious, but try moving and you’ll see how much stuff you have that you don’t want.

sometimes you have to have Things, though. seemingly mostly related to kitchen and bath. we didn’t register for wedding gifts, but for the first time i can see why you’d want to if you were getting married and moving in together in a new place (that wasn’t in africa). anyway, the good feelings of inventory reduction only lasted until we walked into game. game is like walmart, but more than double the price and less than half the quality. i got so ornery that after so much work put in to getting rid of stuff, we were right back into it, spending money on plastic trash cans and crappy kitchen utensils. i had to get an extension cord so we could run the washing machine and it wasn’t until i got home that i realized that the grounding plug wasn’t actually connected to a grounding wire. the cord melted and blew our inverter and fridge. anyway.

the bright spot in buying items for making our new home (and i am very much a homemaker here) has been furniture shopping. every weekend we’ve been going back to the same man on the side of the road and ordering new items for pick-up the following week. so far we have a dining room table and chairs, two shelving units as well as two desks, a dresser and three more shelving units from a neighboring furniture maker (before we found our guy up the street).

“what kind of wood is this?” “african wood.” so, all our stuff is made of african wood. it’s beefy, simple and beautiful. we draw a picture of what we want and a week later there it is. the cash goes into the pocket of a guy with really rough hands. right where it should be. 101phil 101africa