5/2/10 Going Away, Giving Away

A few nights ago (Friday night), my SouqTown buddies got together for a goodbye party. Like thegoing-away, giving-away party I threw 27 months ago, this was both to see loved ones and to get rid of my stuff.

Thanks to the generosity of friends and family, I've accumulated quite a stockpile of care package boxes. I distributed these around my living room, labeled with the names of the various guests coming to the party, and proceeded to fill them with whatever I found. Spices, uneaten foodstuffs, books, appliances, things I've bought, things I've been sent, things I've inherited from previous PCVs... They all got divvied up.

Altogether, I filled 3 giant souq bags, which are about a meter long, half a meter tall, and a foot wide. That's a lot of stuff.

All of which I'm now free of!

My replacement is inheriting the vast majority of my stuff - my bed, my furniture, my giant buta heater, my stove, my oven - but I wanted to share the largess, plus my house has felt crowded lately, and I want him to have room for his own stuff.

So I'm about 100 pounds lighter (which made for a beast of a walk to the transit station, lemme tell you) and that much closer to being ready to leave...

...which, honestly, isn't very close at all.

But it's a step.

When we got here, our mantra was shwiya-b-shwiya. (Take the first sound from Garth and Wayne's "shwing!", add "ee" and then "uh". Shw-ee-ya.) Little by little. Step by step. We learned Tamazight shwiya-b-shwiya. We adapted to the culture and food shwiya-b-shwiya. And now I'm getting ready to go...shwiya-b-shwiya.

Two weeks.

I'll make it.

::deep breath::