Being Prepared

By Natasha

Ok, well we know that Africa is going to be a time without our westernized luxuries and in actual fact we look forward to it.. but little did we know we would be loosing them all so soon.

On Monday we were informed that our phone line was disconnected a whole 3 weeks early. Not a big deal to most in this day and age when we all depend on our cellphones more than landlines... but this line was connected to our internet, our landline (to make free calls internationally) and our Skype phone (for others to call us internationally for free)! So all of a sudden we just felt so disconnected from everything and didn’t get to do all the communication we had to do to organize our move this week and the details for our trip.

Luckily the phone company agreed to provide us internet in the form of a “dongle” (a dial-up USB plug-in), but then the service provider just could not figure out how to make it work on my laptop. I’ve recently updated my operating system and they just couldn’t work out how to make it work in conjunction with their existing software. Most of Tuesday I was on the phone with someone in India for over 4 hours throughout the day and 2 hours in the store! We finally got it to work that night sometime!

They’ve been filming this Clint Eastwood movie across the street (with massive spotlights), and so on Wednesday morning we woke up ready to tackle all the to-do’s on the net only to discover that our power was down... seemingly as a result of the massive amount of power being used across the street. So we had internet, but no power to charge up the laptop or cellphones! LOL! All good and well as the next goal was to pack up for the movers.. but don’t know if you’ve heard, but it has been freezing in London lately. Our power controls our boiler which in turn controls our heat and hot water.

As a result packing was a slow and cold process. So we actually had to pull an all-nighter to get it all together for the movers in the morning. They came and in what seemed like no more that 20 mins, they packed up everything including bedding and kitchenware! That night we were left with a very empty, freezing flat.

Then on Friday we had to return our car to the lease company on Tim’s last day of work. So we had to drink our tea and coffee out of our Nalgene water bottles and slept under thin covers since all our camping stuff was packed up over at Nick and Lana’s.

We just had to laugh the whole time... this was not even a glimpse of what life without those luxuries are like. So truthfully we had nothing to complain about.. instead we were just made aware of how much we rely on these silly things. And thanked God that He is so gracious to take them away one at a time instead of all at once!!