On Becoming a Hoarder (again)

I am reinitiating my old Peace Corps blog about life in Zambia. I am no longer in Peace Corps, but am living in Zambia about 12 kilometers from my old village. I have started an NGO and am working to send orphan students to secondary school. More information on this can be found at our website www.IIMInternational.com. And now back to blogging about life in Zambia... During my Peace Corps service I sort of became a hoarder which is not uncommon, at least for volunteers in Zambia. When things are so difficult to obtain, you suddenly start seeing every object as potentially useful. It becomes difficult to throw anything out because it might someday be useful and also because you become more conscious of your waste when you have to dig a trash pit yourself and burn the items every so often rather than just leaving them at the curb for the trash pick-up: out of sight, out of mind. After moving into our new house with only the bare minimum of household supplies, a few buckets, a few pots/pans, a few dishes, 3 chairs, and 2 small folding tables, we were forced to be somewhat resourceful. Already, we have sewn some curtains from cheap cloth and built shelves for the pantry. As we accumulate what would normally be considered trash, we have held onto these valuable items and turned them into really useful things. For example: the light bulb boxes make good pen holders, the plastic coke bottles can become fly traps, former bottles of oil are used for fetching/storing water, the peanut butter jar is now home to papaya seeds. For the most part this reusing of materials is incredibly resourceful and beneficial for the environment. However, I will be the first to admit that there is a tipping point at which this behavior can go too far. Now when I shop at the grocery, instead of bringing my own reusable bags, I encourage the cashier to use as many bags as possible so that I can have enough trash bags and not have to purchase any. And yes, I am well aware that this isn’t the most environmentally friendly behavior, but it gets worse. That empty glass bottle of Heinz 57 ketchup that we just finished seemed like a priceless gem. I carefully washed it and found a spot for it on our pantry shelf. What will I do with it, you ask. I have no idea, but it seems way too potentially valuable just to throw away. This is where I start heading down a slippery slope of someday waking to find the spare bedroom full of potentially useful items that I have no use for, but feel they are too valuable to simply discard. Thankfully, this time around, Aaron and I have each other so hopefully we will be able to keep each other in check, but maybe we will just become twice as bad as before, who knows? In the meantime I have put most of the items I’ve saved so far to good use and I remain with only a few saved for future use.