sending us stuff

A couple of friends have now emailed me to inquire about the possibility of sending us some of the things that I wrote about recently, when I put up a list of things I wish we had brought with us. I suppose I should have thought of that possibility before putting up the list. I was interested in writing down that list because I thought it might be interesting to look at later in the trip to see how our perceptions will have changed, and also because it's a compact way of expressing some of the differences between our assumptions before the trip and how our life here is unfolding.

In other words, it never occurred to me that someone would actually want to send us something. Frankly, this blew me away. It's an amazing thing, to have good friends. McFall, DAG, and anyone else who is thinking about this ... well, words fail me. To be so far away and know people are thinking about us is an unbought grace of life.

We don't need anything. We're here for ten more months -- it's December first today -- and we live in a big city. We went to a benefit bazaar today at the American School of Yaounde with Ann K and her kids, and found out that you can buy memberships there to use their athletic facilities and get access to their (American-encoded) DVD collection. We're also meeting people here who have American DVD collections and may decide to loan us a few. We recently got access to a small free lending library here, of English and a few French books, operated by the mission community of which, I must admit, I am surprised to find myself a part. (Since part of our volunteer work is for a church here, as well as for RELUFA, we could be regarded as missionaries, if only for a short time. The mind reels. I have a lot of relatives in the preaching business, but never thought I'd join up. But I digress). You can also join the British Council or the French Cultural Center and borrow materials there, for a fee; the French are big into graphic novels, too.

So we don't really need anything. It might be different if we were staying longer, and it would be convenient to have all that stuff I listed, but we're fine. We have work to do, good people to work and hang out with, and the food here is superb. We hope to do some travelling later in the trip, especially if Ann's parents visit this spring, and see more of the country. And we're in good health. More movies, books, underwear ... we can find it here if we really need it. Or get it next fall when we're back. And part of the appeal of this trip for us is to get outside our bubble of convenient American consumer life, and away from the constant pressure to buy things, and to try something different for awhile.

If you are determined to send something anyway, the deal appears to be this: the mail system will take a long time. Once something arrives at RELUFA's PO Box, our work address, which is the address we're using here, we go pick it up, and pay at least the value of the package to get it out of the grip of the post office. They also have DHL here, which someone told me is reliable but very expensive. Email me if you want our address. And paper mail, such as letters, seems to get through fine, but just takes awhile. Ann's mom sent us a letter in October that took about three weeks to arrive from the US.

The one convenience I do intend to pay good money for is an internet connection at home. Then we can call people on Skype.