Packing list

Things I wish I brought:
Pictures - family, friends, Canadian things like farms/markets big and small, cities, the Gulf Islands, transit, homeless people, pollution, food, ...
Maple syrup - Zambians hella love sugar, and this would be so perfect. It was foolish not to take this. My counterpart's family wasn't too impressed that I didn't bring it, once I described it.
Jacket - riding a motorbike requires this, but the temperature is dropping every day...
Toque - Julia knitted such a nice toque :(
Dress socks - why the f can't I find a decent pair here?
Jeans - see jacket. What EWB says about handwashing sucking for jeans isn't a good enough reason to leave them in Canada.
USB, SD memory - you can never have enough. Or enough redundancy in case of failure/theft/African mysticism. Hopefully I'll survive with 512mb for pictures, and 4gb USB. The USB can hold more pictures than I'll take.


Things I shouldn't have brought:
Sleeping bag - wtf was I thinking? UPDATE: Actually, it's totally required for my current place. So it was good to bring after all (saves me the hassle of buying a blanket..)
Laptop - definitely not essential. All I use it for is typing blogs/emails when I'm not near the internet cafe, but the office has a nice computer I could use for that task. At least my laptop is not bulky.


Things I'm glad I didn't bring:
Outlet convertor - it's like they're a necessity in market stalls. In the words of an OVS, there must be a standard kit they give to all small market businesses including candy, groundnuts, talk time, and misc. tools and outlet/power convertors.
Cellphone - Buying one is a hilarious experience. "Hi! Where can I buy a phone?" "Here, I'll sell you mine!"


In the end, the adage "what you leave behind builds character" holds true. My point of this post wasn't to complain but to hopefully help future people going overseas.