It was a big week at the Novak house. Last Tuesday the truck pulled up containing all our Household Effects and Consumables that were shipped by boat. All in all, somewhere around 10,000 lbs. As seems to be the trend in Malawi, the shipment was vastly ahead of schedule (by about 40 days). We were beyond thrilled to get it early, as I can’t begin to explain how much a few decorative things do for making a house feel like home!
My jaw dropped when the truck pulled up because instead of just bringing the 7 crates, they brought the whole dang container from the boat. It was ridiculously big and caused a huge scene (as you can tell by the picture above). I’m always flooded with a mixture of emotions on unpacking day. Of course there’s the excitement of seeing our things again, but there’s also a bit of shame and guilt mixed in for having so much in a place where people have so little. I imagine the Malawians whispering to themselves, “How could a family of 3 possibly need that much stuff?” And the funny thing is, we’ve downsized dramatically in recent years (by about 30% after each post), but at the end of the day it’s still a lot of stuff. Â :(
Inside the shipping container were 7 sealed crates that they cracked open with crow bars. Then all the individual boxes are inside there.
The truck with the container was too big to get up the driveway, so they opened the crates outside our front gate, loaded the boxes onto a smaller truck and drove them up the driveway. With a team of 10, it took about 2 hours to get all the boxes unloaded and placed into the appropriate room. A team of 3 returned the following day to open boxes, put furniture together and take away the packing materials.
Schorasticah, Davie and Esther were immensely helpful and spent the majority of the day unpacking food and organizing the pantry and kitchen. We made some great progress in the last week and I’m pleased to say we’re close to fully unpacked. We still have some camping and outdoor things that need to be stored in a shed we’re having built with the crates. And the paintings are still waiting to be hung. So yeah, it’s coming together nicely.
I’ve been getting lots of requests for pictures of Schorasticah and Esther. I’m pleased to say that I finally got a shot on moving day. Schorasticah, our cook, is the one sitting down and Esther, our nanny, is the one standing. Aren’t they sweet?
As you can see, Nia’s pretty uncomfortable with them…. NOT!
What We Missed Most
I thought y’all might be curious about the items each of us was most excited to have back. For Nia, it was her unicorn.
For Nicholas, it was his beer brewing kit. He was so excited in fact, that he started brewing the day after it came!
And for me, I was shocked to realize that it was chips and salsa that I was most looking forward too. Bizarre, I know!
