Packing Up

We were given a suggestion at our close of service conference—start cleaning and packing, and start doing it now. I rolled my eyes a little at the prospect; we still have 3 months (or around that) left in site. Even if I wasn’t a self proclaimed procrastinator I’d find that to be a little early for such extremes. So I let it fall to the back of my mind and focused in on passing as much time with my Peace Corps family as possible.

After the non-tearful ‘guess this is the last time I’ll see you…wow that sucks’ moments (what can I say, we’re all still in denial about the whole thing) and a 14 hour bus ride back to Chiclayo followed by a 3 hour ride to Nanchoc I walked back into my room and collapsed on the bed. I was exhausted. The past week had been spent thinking about resumes, post Peace Corps medical plans, government job options, how to make the best out o these last months in site, and the ‘AHHHHHHH THE REAL WORLD IS OUT TO GET ME SOMEONE HIDE ME’ moments.

Lying on my bed I noticed one important thing: I have accumulated a lot of stuff in 2 years. I remember my first day in this room. I had a hanging closet (a stick dangling from the rafters by rope), a desk and a bed. Then somewhere along the way I bought a small bookshelf, made another book shelf, bought market bags, a Rubbermaid-like container so the buggies don’t get my food, packets of poster board for charlas, some campo-work clothes, and a lot of DVDs. Not to mention the random crud that I didn’t buy but have covering every free square inch of my room: kilos of paper waiting to be recycled, what’s left of magazines sent from home after art projects, parts of bottles, and paint cans and containers.

While I was taking in all of this mess I heard a voice, a New Jersey voice to be exact, saying “start cleaning, and start cleaning now.” So I started with the most obvious route: gather all the things I can recycle for a little spending cash. I gathered all the white paper into one market bag, all of the magazines in another, and all the random plastic into yet another market bag. At the end of 3 days (yes it took me that long, I did this in my free time, I still had projects to finish at site) I lugged the market bags in 3 different trips to the health post to be weighed. I had 22 kilos of white paper and poster board bits, 15 kilos of magazine paper, and 3 kilos of plastic. The lady who lives at the corner took it all off my hands (she brings recyclables to Chiclayo to sell) and left me with S./ 6. That’s about $2.15.

Okay, so I didn’t make a fortune, but it will buy me the fancy menu in Chiclayo the next time I go in instead of the boring S./4 one—the fancy menu comes with a dessert! And my room looks a lot less crowded. Next goal: get rid of enough stuff so I can make it home with 1 duffel bag and my hiking bag…let’s see if it happens.