A burning question that many of you may have is, "how do you pack for two years in Africa?" To be quite honest, I have no idea. There are guidelines that the Peace Corps gives us and you can ask other current volunteers for suggestions, though it is very rare to leave and not have forgotten something. After a compilation of three different sources (Peace Corps, blogs, and the Tanzanian PC Facebook page suggestions), I came up with a very lengthy list. The screen shot of my list can be microscopically read below, plus or minus a few things.
Now the challenge was not just figuring out what to pack, but also HOW to pack it. First, I split everything up into two main piles (one for the necessities and one for the wants). Then, I resorted to a skill that I have developed over the many years of my traveling abroad, something I call Tetris Packing. For those of you that are not familiar of the game Tetris, it involves a screen where different shapes each composed of four blocks fall from the top of the screen and the goal is to manipulate (flip, rotate, move sideways) the shape for it to fill the whole row without any spaces. This methodology can also be directed to packing since you are essentially trying to pack non-uniform shapes in the most space efficient way possible.
So of course, Tetris packing was the only solution to my problem of trying to fit everything I was planning on taking with me in three bags.
Here is pretty much everything I was packing...
These were the bags I was bringing.
After a few hours spread over the course of 2 days, I was able to Tetris pack everything nicely to fit in these bags, and under the 50 pound limit for both checked bags!
I am not going to lie, I think I packed more food/snacks than anything else. That goes to show you where my priorities lie. ;)
Since I am about to zonk out after a day of traveling to Philly and socializing, I will post about the awesome shenanigans of Staging later! Sweet dreams!
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