My roommate for the 2006 build in India, Tammy has travelled with me on many occasions now, and is the only person I know with whom I can travel for a week and still have something to talk about on the way to the airport to go home. One day I'm going to make her a trophy for that talent.
In 2008, neither of us were able to make the Carter Work Project, so she asked me to go on a mission trip with her church to build a dental clinic in Guatemala instead. (This was actually the trip that got me over my white-knuckle fear of flying, from which I graduated to just being very, very bad at flying.) We roomed together on the trip, which required a GREAT deal of patience on her part. I felt I made up for being a pain in the ass a little bit because whenever she needed something she hadn't packed, I was able to accommodate her from my enormous array of luggage. It's a long story, but I even had a soccer ball and a slinky.
One day, she asked if I had a comb. "A comb? You didn't even pack a comb?" Tammy unapologetically explained her strategy: "I knew I didn't have to pack much, since you'd have everything." Huh. Not just a hat rack.
So, on this perpetual packing list, I've collected some quotes and poems and one joke that I like to review when I'm travelling to alleviate my anxiety. (To take some of the suspense out of it, I now e-mail my packing list du voyage to Tammy shortly before we go anywhere together. Now it's over-packing for the good of the many.) The joke is from Reader's Digest, the back-issues of which I read voraciously all summer long as a child, which may explain my digest-sized attention span now. As I'm getting ready for a Carter-cation today, I reread the joke, and it put me in mind of last year's Haiti build. And, for no other reason than that, I'm sharing it here...
IN A REMOTE VILLAGE in Sierra Leone, West Africa, I befriended Alpha, one of the local men on our building crew.
Alpha was impressed with my tool set and was amazed to find a woman working in construction. He'd bring extra rice and greens for lunch and we'd sit and talk. He asked about my husband, and I told him I wasn't married.
Alpha said he wanted sons and that he would marry soon. He wondered whether I'd stay in his country, and then surprised me by saying he had an important question for me.
I was nervous about his impending marriage proposal, and the next day Alpha was solemn as he asked if I was ready to answer his question. I nodded. "When you go back to America," he said, "may I have your trowel? "
— "All In a Day's Work"
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