Saturday, May 23, 2009

Rummage Sale

The alarm clock blared at 6 am this morning. I actually got out of bed at 6:20 and our Saturday morning song by the Eels had never been played so early.

"It's Saturday morning, who's gonna play with me? It's 6 in the morning baby, and I got a long long day ahead of me."

Downstairs, 2 cardboard boxes sat filled to the brim with our stuff. Stuff we had accumulated during our time here -- mostly kitchen things, and stuff we didn't want to lug back to the states, freeing up valuable kilos for the trek home.

Our taxi driver arrived at 7:30 on the dot and we were out the door. We arrived at a local mission and set up on one of the few remaining tables. Rob helped me dump everything out and we started arranging and pricing right away as some early birds were already making rounds hoping to catch the good stuff before the doors officially opened. I asked Rob if he remembered our last yard sale. We were in East Point, we were moving, we had a ton of stuff to sale, and we were both suffering from a classified "mild" reaction to immunizations we received the previous day. Oh, we were so sore, nauseated, shaking with chills, and felt kinda out of it the whole day. It got worse and worse until we both ended up on an air mattress on the floor in the living room while people poked around in our stuff. I was so glad to have Rob's parents there to help us! We would have had to cancel the sale had they not been there.


I really enjoy yard sales. It's so fun to me to sit out in a chair and talk to people, make signs, have a money pouch, etc. But I must admit, it's also just a lot of fun to get money for things you want to get rid of. I can't wait to be on the shopping end when we get to Lancaster. If I'd had a goal in mind for our day's profit, it would be to recoup most of the cost of my internet modem and the one trip we made to T2000 (the chinese store) when we first moved into our house - Rob's goal was to get enough money to have one more dinner at Khana Khazana. Either way, it was going to be a fun day of hanging out with friends.

The lady at the table next to ours was selling homemade bagels in addition to her rummage sale treasures and rob and I each bought one for 300 RWF a piece and coffees from some cute girls at the entrance (their version of a lemonaid stand I guess) for 200 RWF. It was a wonderful breakfast. Later in the morning we bought some mollasses cookies from the same girls and the cookies tasted like Christmas. I have to get the recipe before we leave.

We couldn't resist doing a little bit of shopping too, while we were there. Rob bought a card game, "Mille Bornes" for 1000 RWF. A game I tell him I had as a kid but he refuses to believe I could be that cool. And I traded some sauce packets for 4 hair scarves. Actually, the lady just gave me the hair scarves, but I insisted she take something from my table. I've secretly always wanted to wear hair scarves, but I didn't think I could pull off "the look". But today, I felt brave and I'm rockin' the hair scarf.

Our total profit for the day - 62, 500 RWF. Pretty good considering we came home with a card game, scarves, bagel bellys, an unsold internet modem, and some other miscellaneous items. We're not done selling yet, either. I'm going to list a few things on our country's version of Craigslist and try to sell the others at my last bible study next month. I think I'll meet my goal before it's all over.

2 comments:

  1. hey girl! can you send me an email so i can email you back? in other words, i don't have your address and wanted to ask you some things...
    take care!

    ReplyDelete