the packing list nobody told us

Before we moved to CAR, I got some good tips from friends on "what to bring with us" ...a mosquito net, a good quality knife, a garlic press (you'd be surprised how many people mentioned the garlic press). But as a friend and I were musing this afternoon, we started talking about the things that we should have brought with us, but that nobody really told us to bring...

Fancy shoes. [Please pardon me from here on out for using the general term "Africans" to refer to the residents of Cameroon and the Central African Republic. Each time you read "Africans," keep in mind that while I do know that Africa is not a country - and therefore it is often ridiculous to refer to the inhabitants of such a diverse continent with a single, sweeping term - it is also pretty unwieldy to write "Cameroonians and Central Africans" over and over.]

Africans wear beautiful shoes. They wear clean, polished, shiny, pointy-toed, super-high-heeled, amazing shoes. And they wear them for everyday occasions such as...almost everything! And the shoes do not stand alone. They are usually part of a very well-put-together outfit such as a three-piece suit for a man or a gorgeous ensemble complete with matching headdress for a woman.

So in such a place, an outsider like me can gain a certain level of acceptance and respect by caring enough to wear fancy shoes (okay, within reason: probably no four-inch heels!) My most recent shoe acquisitions--suede brown high heels + a pair of sparkly black flats--will both be important parts of my African wardrobe.

Plastic shoes. So if you take the number of times that you are out in public here and realize that you should be wearing fancy shoes in order to not embarrass yourself...multiply that number of times by ten and THAT is how often you will be out on the town and only wish that you were wearing plastic shoes.

I'm talking about all those times that torrential downpours start out of nowhere, the whole dirt road washes out, and you find yourself walking through a foot-deep mud swamp rather than along a dry road. And also all the times that it isn't raining, and each step you take sends up a little orange dirt-cloud into the air...until your shoes are the same color as the dirt road. And then the times when you accidentally step off the road and into a little ditch which is the pathway of all things unspeakable. All those times, you wish you were wearing plastic shoes that you could submerge in their own hot, soapy bath when you get home. Thankfully, I do now own plastic shoes as well.

Headlamp. Even a few good years into my missionary career, I was still inwardly snickering at people who wear headlamps. Admit it: they look ridiculous! Like spelunkers wannabes. Well, after a couple of years of living in a rare-electricity environment where most evenings found me stumbling around a dark house, tripping over everything while trying to balance a massive Maglite flashlight or (worse) kerosene lantern in my hand...I'm a believer. We own an industrial-strength headlamp with an obnoxious yellow headband and a big light that can be adjusted up and down: any spelunker's envy, I'm sure--and I use it with pride.

Washboard. Yes, an old fashioned washboard. And probably every other antique item you see on display on the "American history museum wall" at your local Cracker Barrel restaurant. Since living in Africa, I have more than once been in Cracker Barrel and commented to Adam, "I wish they would take that [washboard or other item that to them is a mere trinket to display] so we could actually put it to good use." There are plenty of handy items our grandmothers used, before the modern day of washing machines and other helpful technologies, that totally make sense to me now. Besides washboards, I'm thinking about clothes ringers, meat grinders, butter churns, water pumps, anything made out of cast iron and reel lawn mowers.

Thermos. I moved to a place where relationships matter more than almost anything else, and suddenly I discovered a lot of people were coming over to my house for coffee. Numerous times per day. Every single day. I began to spend a lot of time in my kitchen heating up water on either our charcoal cooker or our finicky gas two-burner stove, making coffee in our (wonderful) stainless steel French press, reheating coffee... Finally, it dawned on me that I may be spending a good quarter of my day just heating or reheating coffee. The name brand Thermos I got for Christmas last year may be one of the most time-saving devices I own.

Garam masala. First it was just an Indian spice blend of which I had bought too large a quantity in the U.S. and with which I was unwilling to part because I was feeling too thrifty. So I took it in my suitcase...and it became the magical seasoning in an amazing array of dishes. I found out that garam masala tastes great not only in chicken tikka masala (though I recommend making that pretty often if you can), but also in chili, peanut sauce, tacos, anything that calls for cinnamon (I mean, when you don't have cinnamon)...and pretty much almost anything else.

I wonder what things other people would add to this list.

And I think it would be even more interesting to spend some time thinking about the things that we brought with us...but should have left behind. Something I'm always in the process of learning is that I don't need everything I thought that I would need. And moving overseas, it's good to leave space in your life for a new world to move in. That's definitely the stuff of a separate post, though.