Some of you may be wondering what I (Abook) did while J was gone for three weeks. My main job was “kid wrangling” but I also took on the task of sewing curtains and packing up our house to move! I thought I’d share a picture. Pictured above is about 1/2 of what we are sending into South Sudan (the other half is bulkier items such as mattresses). Pretty amazing to see your whole house in “almost” one picture!
Packing to get things into country is a very involved process. You must have an itinerary sheet of exactly what is going on the plane (box #1-?) and the priority of each item (we cannot be overweight so items can be pulled!). In addition this master list must contain the weight of each box.
Taped on each box must be the box number, your name and destination, the weight of the box and a separate piece of paper stating what is in each box (item, quantity, estimated value (if bought in Kenya receipt #, and usage: personal, business etc…) it also must indicate if any items are metal and which ones. Then each box must be surrounded with SIM tape. The rule of thumb here is if you think you have enough tape, add more!
After this picture I took all these to the office and weighed them all and added the weight to each box and to my inventory list. I then compared our total weight with our alotted weight this is the time you either decide you cannot take it all in or add more.
The final step is to provide the logistics team with your inventory list, and a list of what is in each box in addition to copies of every receipt.
If this sounds complex you should hear the logistics departments job it is nothing compared to this! They do a phenomenal job of making sure that we can get into country!
No surprise that you are able to accomplish everything that 10 women + 2 can do. I am sure your girls were happy with the step of tape and adding more!!! Those girls can burn through a roll of tape. Miss you all.