Spoiled for good gear

Though I had to leave my job at Mountain Equipment Coop (MEC) to continue on the grad school adventure, I certainly haven’t left MEC behind. As my luxury item on this trip I brought my new GSI insulated coffee press and mug. While I haven’t found any A1 coffee yet, the local Robusta variety still makes a decent cup in the morning. It’s a luxury item because I could make cowboy coffee, the old boil in the pot variety, but I was spoiled for good coffee long ago.

Stay tuned for more SfN gear tips.

Are you spoiled for normal?

I would like to open up the Spoiled for Normal blog to those with their own stories of being spoiled for normal. Email me your post (not your life story) about your own Spoiled for normal moments and I will post them for others to read, be inspired and find courage.

Send them to spoiledfornormal@gmail.com

Go on living life outside the box!

Home decorating at home and abroad

I remember attending a church in Florida and feeling completely out of place when having lunch at the pastor’s house the discussion around the table centred on draperies and furnishings, where to buy them, colours and so on. I felt like I would never fit in to such a crowd and that remained one of the reasons we moved on to find another church. There was nothing wrong with this particular church but it was small and I knew I would find a hard time fitting in. Much to my surprise, every church was pretty much the same and I began to realise how not normal I was. Granted I had been living at ECHO for a few months already, but even more so I think my dislike of home decorating comes from the fact that my family never put much emphasis on it. We moved in, hung up a few pictures and we were ‘home’. I can’t ever remember my mom picking out paint or tile or new furniture until I was well into my twenties.

Since venturing out into the adult world I have discovered that most of my peers value what the interior of their homes looks like. They go to great pains to pick out the perfect colour of paint, the right couch, bathroom fixtures and on and on. What I realize is that I enjoy going to their homes, they are beautiful, everything matches and they have a certain amount of pride over the way their homes look. I, on the other hand, enjoy my eclectic, thrown together, pieces gathered from other people’s homes look. I hope people from the home decorating side don’t feel uncomfortable in my home, but I honestly love my random apartment.

These aren’t random thoughts; rather my first few days in Kampala have been met with discussions of paint colours and the refinishing of furniture. The expat homes in Kampala are huge, multi-roomed, with very large living areas and windows. The interiors have imported furniture, window coverings and paint colours beyond the standard white we have in Gamboula. One couple I met on Wednesday took great pains to pick out the colours for the home they were renting. They narrowed the choices down to 13 different colours for all the various rooms in their house.

I am often surprised at how narrow minded I can be. I have this false idea that all people who choose to live in developing countries are just like me. Thank God they are not; how arrogant of me, really. We are who we are, and no matter that you live thousands of miles from what was home, we take our likes and dislikes with us. No matter where I live I will not spend my time and money on interior decorating. I believe I am the exception in this (spoiled for normal) and I apologize for those who enter my home and find eclectic chaos rather than matching earth tones of paint. Perhaps it is because we are too poor to buy paint, but I would like to think it is because this is who I am. I am learning to look interested while ooing and awing over tile choices and paint chips. Somehow I find it hard to find people who want to discuss the latest conflict analysis or favourite mango varieties.

So please don’t take this as an anti-decorating diatribe. Keep the economy going; buy paint, ship furniture, match your pillow shams to your window treatments. Just don’t roll your eyes the next time I bring up how tasty the Glenn mango is and pretend to look interested in the root causes of conflict in CAR.