The Moving Story (Part II)

Welcome to Santa Cruz. We also do sunsets.

Now where was I?

We woke up bright and early the next morning in a dormitory in the Foundation. In the nine years that we had spent in Trinidad, in various accommodations, incredibly this was the first night we had spent on the FT premises. For me, sleep never really being my strong suit, and with a long day's journey ahead, it was a typically fitful night. Not that I had much to be worried about in terms of the logistics of the move.

Right?

Not wishing to waste time, we and the minimal possessions we had on our person were packed up and ready to go by 7am, saying cheerio to the few people who could be bothered to get up at that time. And then off we went.

Now, before bidding the removal guys farewell the night before, the boss had double-checked the plan for the next day. We had originally arranged to meet them around the time we hoped to arrive in Santa Cruz, in the late afternoon or early evening. "Oh no!" he told me, as if he'd heard this plan for the first time, "I have to be in Sucre by tomorrow night! Noon at the latest." There was no chance of us getting to Santa Cruz by then. "Very well," I said, "There are plenty of people in the church willing to help us out, and so we'll ask one of them to meet you there, and leave their number with you." And helpfully enough, our new friend Jackie was happy to do just that.

"Oh, and by the way," he had said to me, "You know we weren't anticipating your house having stairs, or that wardrobe being so big." (The words of a man who couldn't be bothered getting the ropes out of the truck for said item.) "I'll be expecting you to pay me a bit more than what we agreed on when we get to Santa Cruz." I kept my mouth shut.

Everything, then, was in place for a smooth move. And the drive was going well. The road was as atrocious as ever, but the car was behaving itself, and our early departure meant we hit our usual lunch stop in good time. It was around now that I thought it would be best to give the removal company a quick call to check that they too were on schedule. True to form, there was no answer, but I reckoned a couple of hours' leeway could reasonably be expected.

Lunch. Not the best road, but some nice scenery along the way.

But as we set off for the second leg, Jackie got in touch to say that she too had heard nothing from the movers. And she would repeat this message every 30 minutes or so. As the bright lights of Santa Cruz loomed closer, we increasingly resigned ourselves to a very late night in our new home. But at least we'd have our stuff. That was the main thing.

However, soon even that was looking like a vain hope. By the time we reached the city limits, it was the same old story. All the company's advertised numbers were again going straight to voicemail. And because it was a local holiday, the office was closed too. Come 5pm, Jackie -- who, to be fair to her, has a life -- rightly abandoned ship. Our last hope was that they'd made it to our house just before our own arrival, just after 6pm. But when we pulled into our new driveway, there was nobody awaiting us. And so, after a quick peek around the new place, we called a nearby friend, who very kindly put up with us put us all up for the night.

Given the fact that for all we knew, our entire earthly possessions could have been halfway to Montevideo, a surprisingly good night's sleep ensued. But as morning broke, it was time to hit the phones again. Straight to voicemail every time. Nothing had changed.

Then out of nowhere, at 9am, a text message appeared on my phone, telling me that the number of the boss was now available to call (i.e., he'd finally decided to turn it on after two days). This I duly did. "Ah, tranquilo!" ("Chill out") he said -- empathy was a real selling-point here -- "We'll be at your house in half an hour. We just had a breakdown leaving Trinidad and couldn't find anyone to fix it because of the holiday. So that's what the delay was. Don't worry about it." And this from a man who had been so agitated to get to Santa Cruz pretty much a full 24 hours earlier.

It is fair to say that by the time we met the Jenga Truck at our new place, with not an item out of place, we were too relieved to be angry. And so, knowing well how prickly Bolivian 'service providers' can become at the merest hint of impropriety, no matter how well-founded (there was genuinely potential in this moment for them to dump our stuff on the pavement without getting it in place in the house) I opted to keep my powder dry until the move was complete a few hours later.

With everything in place, all that remained was to settle the remaining balance, agreed some weeks earlier. But of course, someone was in the mood for dessert.

"Thanks for this," he said, "Now, about the extr--"

I was always raised not to interrupt people, but I could no longer contain myself. I proceeded to spend the best part of three minutes introducing my hitherto unenlightened friend to the basics of customer service. That it entails keeping the lines of communication open at all times. That it entails keeping the client appraised as to developments -- for I could have waited forever and a day for our stuff, so long as I had an inkling as to when it was going to arrive. That it entails arriving for a job when you said you would, or as near as possible. That it entails empathy with clients who may have a justifiable grievance. That it entails honesty with the client from the outset as to the quality of the materials involved. That -- and this is game-changing stuff -- doing all of the above will probably make your business significantly more successful than it is right now. And that, above all, YOU DON'T WIN MANY FRIENDS BY DEMANDING BONUSES FOR TRANSPORTING AN ITEM OF FURNITURE I TOLD YOU ABOUT WEEKS AGO, AND WHICH YOU COULDN'T BE BOTHERED TO MOVE PROPERLY AND THUS ENDED UP SCRATCHING UP TILL IT RESEMBLED ONE OF THOSE TREES IN THE PARK NEXT TO MY OLD HIGH SCHOOL, WHICH USED TO HAVE ENGRAVINGS LIKE 'BIG DAVEY + CHANTAL 4EVA', IN THE PROCESS!!!

OK, I may not have referenced said amoureux, but you get the point.

And, mercifully, so did he.

*            *            *

Well, thank goodness we don't have to do that for a while. Nearly five weeks on, we are settling in nicely to Santa Cruz, and I will share more on that next week.

Prayer Points

• Give thanks that our stuff did manage to get here in the end.
• Pray for Amanda, who has come down with a bad stomach upset in the last day or so. We seem to be getting a lot of these just now, so pray that we might receive sound medical help on this.
• I am afraid to report that our house in Trinidad (which is on the market) was robbed last week. Mercifully, our tenant, a woman called Romina, was not harmed. However, she has lost some important items, and we have had to take care of some overdue repairs there as a result in the past week. Pray for protection over that house, and over Romina in particular.
• Staying with that house, please pray that we might be able to sell it soon, and thus be able to release some capital for perhaps buying or building here in Santa Cruz in the coming years.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig, Amanda & Sam

The Moving Story (Part I)

The wardrobe of doom.

Two months have passed since we last updated our blog. That's probably the longest we've gone between posts while being based on the field. However, it's also a reflection of the busyness of our lives since we last posted. Between confirmation of my new role and our moving date, we had five weeks to prepare to leave our home base for a near-decade.

To make up for lost time, we will endeavour to write a short(ish) post once a week for the next few weeks, with the aim of gradually painting a picture of our move to Santa Cruz and the settling-in process. Here, I will touch specifically on leaving Trinidad.

Now given our nine years there as a couple (and almost 19 years since I first set foot in the Beni region), you may at this juncture be expecting something along the lines of a dewy-eyed BBC Sport montage. But the reality will be rather different, for two reasons. Firstly, we had so little time to get everything in place for the move that there was simply no real opportunity to properly digest leaving Trinidad and the many friends we left behind there. Secondly, if you've read our previous post, and if you've had any contact with us of late, you will be aware that we've not really felt 'at home' in Trinidad for some time; if anything, the process of saying goodbye has been an extended one, over the last year or two.

All that said, we have one last item of official business to fulfil in Trinidad: a longstanding commitment to oversee a team arriving from Canada in July. We will be back there with the team for around ten days, and our hope is that conditions then will be much more relaxed, and therefore much more conducive, to bid the place a proper farewell.

The focus for the remainder of this post, then, will be on the practicalities of the move itself -- a far from uneventful procedure!

The road between Trinidad and Santa Cruz is only about 350km in length, but the quality of its surface varies considerably; we used to be able to drive it in eight or nine hours in our car including breaks, but worsening conditions have lengthened the journey to around eleven hours. Bearing in mind this, as well as the much longer time a haulage vehicle was going to need, we knew there was no chance of completing the move in a single day. So, we arranged for the movers to come to Trinidad on the morning of the 22nd of January (a Monday). We would then stay in accommodation at Foundation Totaí that night, setting off early the next day, with the goal of rendezvousing with the movers here in Santa Cruz that evening.

What, indeed, could possibly go wrong?

Having made contact with the Santa Cruz-based removal company some weeks before, I wired a deposit to their account a few days before the move. Confirming receipt of said monies, the head of the company (also the main driver) told me we could expect them in Trinidad early on Monday morning.

9am on Monday and still no sign of them. No big deal. This is Bolivia, after all. But still nothing at 9:30. Nor 10. So I began to make some calls. Except that all of the company's advertised numbers went straight to voicemail (ie, their phones weren't even switched on). At this point, we were beginning to worry. Had we been victims of an elaborate scam? So we made contact with some friends in Santa Cruz, who helpfully paid a visit to the company's headquarters ('office' would seemingly be too generous a term). The woman there assured them that the moving team had left Santa Cruz on Saturday, and we should expect to hear from them soon. And sure enough, at around 11am, I finally heard from the boss, telling me they had arrived in Trinidad, and we could expect to see them soon. Quite frankly, I was too relieved to complain.

But this, too, proved something of a fib. The hours passed again with no sign of the movers. I called at half-hour intervals to be informed that "Estamos llegando" ("We are arriving"), a more cryptic statement than meets the eye: we learned long ago that in this culture, it can equally be rendered, "Stop bothering me! You'll see me when you see me!"

Still, we reckoned it would be worth the wait. If the company's professional-looking website was anything to go by, we could expect a modern, gleaming-white lorry, with more than enough space for our earthly possessions.

Compare...

And so, imagine our surprise when, finally, at 3pm, this contraption shambled up our street:

...and contrast.

As a motorised vehicle, it looked about as reliable as a Venezuelan election result. But that didn't phase us too much; there's practically no mechanical fault your average Bolivian road-user can't fix. What did concern us more was the size, and I made my concerns known to the boss upon arrival. To which he responded with a considered analysis of all the factors involved: "Nah, it'll be fine, don't worry about it." And to be fair, we weren't exactly in the mood to wait another few days for a bigger vehicle.

Before we knew it, the seven-strong team were making up for lost time, working furiously to get everything packed up. Having no experience of moving within Bolivia, the whole experience was an eye-opener. The first thing they did was come in with a great quantity of woolen blankets. Having arrived this late, were they now planning on staying the night?! Actually, no. They proceeded to wrap every single large item of furniture (including our eight-seater dining room table), and all of our large domestic appliances, in said blankets, before generously applying several layers of industrial-strength cling-film. This process in itself took around 90 minutes.

It was then time to start loading the truck, the goal being to pack the large furnishings as tightly as possible, while packing smaller items -- such as our many boxes -- around them. The biggest challenge here was a large and very heavy wardrobe which we had bought second-hand from a friend a few years ago, an item so cumbersome that back then, we hired a small team with ropes to haul it upstairs via one of the balconies (it was too wide to go up the stairs). Well, our friends in January came to the studied conclusion of: "Ropes? Nah!") and thus, they endeavoured to lower it from one of the balconies on to the bed of the truck among themselves. This was the result.

Apologies for turning away at the crucial moment. This is why I never went into war photography. Anyway, this being Bolivia, they all just chuckled about it and got on with the job. Remarkable.

Remarkably, by around 7pm, most items were now loaded, but a good hour or so more of rearrangement was in store, as they tried their best to fit some final things. By this point, the truck resembled a Jenga tower on wheels. They admitted defeat on a few things, which we decided to either leave behind or squeeze into our car for the next day's journey. 

And so, for all the frustration of the perennial delays, and our concerns over size, you had to hand it over them: in five hours or so, they more or less had our entire earthly possessions squeezed into a vehicle surely designed for far smaller loads. We were impressed, and make no mistake. 

Which made what happened next all the more galling.

[Note to self: Insert "dum-dum-DUMMM!" audio-clip here.]

To be continued...

A typically Trinidad sunset ends a typically Trinidad day!

At this point, we usually share some items for prayer. Please excuse any vagueness at this juncture, so as to spoiler-proof future posts about the move!

Prayer Points

• Give thanks that pretty much all our goods made the cut for the move to Santa Cruz.
• We have settled into our new rhythms and roles here fairly well. Sam is greatly enjoying his new school, while Craig has made a solid start as pastor. Meanwhile, Amanda has taken on a new, small role with Latin Link, as the interim coordinator for short-term volunteers in Bolivia.
• The latter point is especially apt, as a new volunteer -- Simon Howling -- has just arrived from England. He will be staying with us for a few days, before heading to...Trinidad! That's right. He will be working there alongside some of our old cohorts for the next couple of years. Give thanks for his safe arrival, and give thanks for Laura Szejnmann, also from England, who is here in Santa Cruz for a few months as part of Latin Link. We enjoyed meeting her a couple of weeks ago.
• And staying with Latin Link, Craig attended his first executive board meeting since being elected to serve on the board last September. Give thanks for a productive meeting for Craig and his fellow board members Graham Frith and Julie Noble.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig, Amanda & Sam