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Published: September 6th 2007
The Truck
The narrow streets outside our apartment block didn't seem to bother these blokes!For those of you who haven't packed up your entire life and left your home country, this is a big deal. Imagine arriving in a foreign place, moving into a new apartment, beginning a new job and socialising with your new colleagues with the contents of just one suitcase. Airlines out of Oz are very strict nowadays about how much you are able to actually check in and carry on. 20kg checked, 7 kg carried.
Now imagine you arrive to work with nothing except some soft copies of resources on a laptop. No books. Nothing physical that you can show others. You don't have a home, only a house with some generic (by that I mean every other staff member has exactly the same as you do!!) furniture. A shell.
Now imagine living like this for 4 weeks.
For those of you who do know what it is like to try and have your belongings released from customs, you will understand what its like to live like this KNOWING that our stuff was sitting at the docks BEFORE we even arrived. Every day we harassed the liaison at the school to harass the shipping company
"We ship anywhere'
Well they must do if the Sydney Opera House is emblazoned on the cabin door. to harass customs. That is how things work here and almost everywhere for that matter. Well, last Thursday, a religious holiday, we received a call to say that our shipment would be arriving from Chittagong (the main port in the south of Bangladesh) at around 11am. REJOICE! REJOICE!
Bec and I hurriedly removed all the furniture out of the living room (see previous blog for a photo) in preparation for our 87 cartons. Now, we didn't know how much stuff that was. You see, when we left Suzhou, we had our stuff packed and sent to Beijing where it sat in Bec's folks house (Thanks Jim and Karen!) for six months until we knew where we would need to ship it to. Once we knew we were coming to Bangles, Karen hired an international shipping company to come and repack everything ready to ship to us. We couldn't fathom that we actually had that much stuff.
Sure enough, having badgered them for weeks about when it would arrive, the truck arrived 30 minutes early. It was a large truck. Not a semi-trailer, but still pretty big. On the back were not one, but two MASSIVE wooden crates. We
The audience
These blokes can't wait to start heaving all our stuff upstairs. Look at the size of the crate! didn't have enough to fill a full shipping container, so to make it more secure we had them encase our stuff in two large wooden boxes. Kinda like the ones you see on movies when they want to transport elephants. Only without the breathing holes.
Two local blokes used a crowbar to leavered off a wall of the crate like a crim breaking into a warehouse. Inside stacked floor to sealing wall to wall without a square foot to spare was our stuff. Everything boxed to fit perfectly inside.
Then the unloading began as four young lads carried all 87 cartons up 6 flights of stairs into our newly vacated living room. It took them about 2 hours. The truck driver sat and smoked a cigarette watching the four soldiers toil in the 30+ degree heat. Obviously he was only paid to drive, not carry.
The shipping company in China had done a brilliant job. Everything was encased in cardboard. Our bikes. Our three piece sofa. Our pictures and artwork. Then of course there was the standard tea chests. Once all the boxes were checked off by the boss (who also didn't carry anything), we told them
which boxes went where in the house and they helped unpack some of them. We all was said and done, we asked them to please take out the rubbish. They weren't impressed. I am not sure what they expected us to do with probably 50 cardboard boxes and the wrapping paper. We asked them if they could recycle them and they gave a somewhat unconvincing answer.
Once they were gone, Bec and I set about putting up all our photos and artwork, unpacking all our books and making our house a home (I hope the Aussies all get that 'Castle' reference, i've been belting it out all week!). Our housekeeper arrived and so she took care of unpacking the kitchen.
So far, we don't think anything is missing. Since the military took over, customs have become very strict and are searching pretty much any shipment that comes into port. Other teachers at the school have had clothing covered in dirty hand prints, bike lights stolen, rugs 'confiscated' and all many of other horror stories. Since we didn't pack our shipment in Beijing, we are not sure if there is anything missing. That fact coupled with the sheer quantity
Breaking the seal
Big crow bars. Wooden crates. Ah, a perfect match. of stuff we have makes it very difficult to tell. We didn't have any hand prints.
On the Sunday...I mean Saturday (we are still getting used to the Sunday to Thursday week), we used the school bus to take in about 12 boxes of teaching resources to school. The driver didn't know what hit him.
So now we have a home. Maybe I'll use one of the spare rooms as a pool room. How much are they asking for a pool table? 90,000 taka? Dreamin.....
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Sima
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Congrats!
On the wedding ofcourse (since i didn't do that yet) and on the safe arrival of your beloved belongings!