a day in the life.

It’s hard to capture for you what we have and don’t have here.  My (David) trip to Office Depot the other day may shed some light.  We have an Office Depot!  We don’t have electricity during the day or enough hot water to take a full shower, but we do have an Office Depot.  Some of our friends serving in more remote parts of the world are grimacing with jealousy.

In putting together my home office, I decided to research a quality printer to purchase.  I hate to spend money, so I am the type of guy who researches options and opinions for hours.  I jumped in an auto rickshaw taxi armed with three printer choices and made my way toward the center of our city.

If our city’s Office Depot was a church, think more house fellowship than Willow Creek.  It is one story with four aisles.  There are office supplies towards the front – paper, pencils, pens, scissors, etc. – and random items towards the back – cookies, candles, and paper plates.  It’s like a shrunken Walmart that saved its least helpful inventory.

I make my way to the “printer department” – ten or so printers lining the wall.  None of the three printers I painstakingly researched are here.  I crumple up my index card.  No worries, I have 3G on my phone and can search online for one.  The internet is down on my phone today and has actually hardly ever worked.  So I wing it, speaking with a sales rep in broken English.  She talks me into a printer and I say I’ll take it.  None in stock.  I reluctantly choose my second option.  None of those either.

Huh, its funny we spent so long talking about printers they don’t have and won’t get for another month.  I am now carrying my sixth-choice printer to the check out counter when I realized I forgot to get ink.  None in stock.

I change my strategy.  All the while I had been thinking in terms of what I wanted, now I finally ask, “What printers and ink have impossibly aligned themselves together in this same store at this very moment?”  There are two choices.  I take the one on the left.

I carry my printer to the curb and try to hail an auto.  There is only one person in this city who will get overcharged for an auto more than a white man.  It is a white man with a heavy load.  I cringe at the price we agree on.  I would do anything in the world for a car trunk.  I have more shopping to do and will have to carry this dumb printer everywhere I go.