HHE

One week shy of 3 months after it was packed up by the shippers in Springfield, my household essentials (HHE) finally arrived!

Can you believe that all this fit in only one wooden shipping crate?

As one of my office colleagues said, “Opening your HHE is like Christmas and your birthday all rolled up in one!”  She is right.

Unlike a lot of folks, I really didn’t ship that much personal stuff (yeah, it pretty much filled the open area in my living room [hey, I’d already unpacked a couple of big boxes before I thought to take a picture] but I didn’t ship furniture and stuff . . .) and included a lot of food (consumables as it’s called shipping-wise) - this way I still have my full consumables allotment (2,400 pounds) to ship if I want it. (Think of the shopping list I’d send to Ann for that!).

Anyway, it was very exciting!  My own Trader Joe’s Marinara sauce, spices galore, and my own pots and pans.  Sure, a lot of the pots and pans are new, but they’re pretty good quality (thanks to Christmas sales when I bought it) and they’re mine!  I even cheered (yes, audibly cheered) when I opened a box and saw Taco shells.  Now, you’ve got to understand that back home in Springfield, I think Ann and I have made tacos twice, three times at most over 11 years in the house.  So why was I so happy?  Well, it’s because of the few meats I can buy here (of the ones I can identify), hamburger meat is one of the few I can trust.  So when I saw taco shells I knew I could have some meat with them.  I guess this is what so many foreign service officers have told me it’s like, after a bit, you really, really like stuff from home almost no matter what it is.  That and I know I paid 1/3 the price for these taco shells over what they would charge me in the stores here.  I hardly ever look at US brand-name products in the store anymore; the stuff from Europe is cheaper and it’s cheapest if it’s from the Middle-East.  Generally it’s just as good, and canned food is canned food.

So the first night I unpacked most of the stuff in boxes I knew were not food-stuff.  Day 2 was food.

Overall I did a pretty darned good job I think.  I kept coming across little things I packed (stacking storage trays, accessory items, etc) that made me think - “That’s great, I was going to ask Ann about that.”  I probably went a bit overboard with the clothes, especially stuff for fall - I doubt I’ll ever get cold enough to wear one, not to mention the three warm sweaters/sweat shirts I bought.  And as much as I love my vests, don’t need them!  I suspect I’ll be brining home a bunch of the clothes; or ship it back when I leave here (hopefully later rather than sooner).  I have a tea pot, and lots of teas, as well as a stove-top espresso maker.  And, as you can see in the photos, I have a stand-up ironing board.

I also have quite a bit of food.  A lot of stuff (like rice) they have a lot of here and it’s cheap.  Any Liberian will tell you that they have not eaten until they eat rice.  They serve rice with every meal.  So I guess I didn’t really need to ship that huge bag of rice from Costco (who knew?), though the brown and wild rices are in short supply here, so . . . . Anyway, I packed plenty of oils and chicken stock (both very expensive here - unless you cook with palm oil and make your own stock from fish heads or chicken bones); tomatoes, tomato sauce and soups (also very expensive); snack bars, dried fruits and nuts (insanely expensive); baking goods (not too bad) and pre-packaged baking items (back to the insanely expensive category); and toilet paper (super insanely expensive [$2.00 per roll] - but your hiney is worth it, right?]).  Here’s a shot of my pantry area now:

I’m sure you noticed Pinky there on the left.  He served a very useful function - the packers filled him with pasta.  He’s still the keeper of the pasta.  Odd thing is though, pasta’s not really that expensive . . . oh well.  In the above photo, only the black trunk and the blue tub in the upper right are empty.  Everything else is full.  I guess I’m not going to starve for awhile.

I also have a couple of boxes full of laundry and cleaning supplies.  Those too are insanely expensive so I’m really glad I shipped that stuff.  I suspect that the $700 or so I spent on food items will result in $700 to $1,000 in savings around here.  Plus now that I have two things of maple syrup and lots of pancake batter makings, I can learn to cook pancakes.  Somehow I don’t think I’ll replace Ann when it comes to being a breakfast chef.

So, you recognized Pinky in the bottom photo.  Can you identify him in either of the top two?