ADVENTURES IN MOVING

A friend just commented “that moving must be a nightmare for me.”  She was referring to my penchant for accumulating things based on a philosophy of “Hey, that’s pretty cool. Why don't I get that?”  She was right, of course.  Especially given the fact that for the last 30 or so years of my life, moving has primarily involved travelling between multiple countries by air transportation.  There is just so much stuff you can fit in two suitcases and a carryon (no matter how liberally you stretch the concept of “able to fit into an overhead compartment or under your seat.”)

Never have I come up against moving challenges and airline strictures more so than when I first moved to Nicaragua from the U.S. in 1988.  I had just gotten married to a Nicaraguan national who was in the U.S. completing a Master’s Degree on a Fulbright Scholarship.  We were returning to Nicaragua (I had been there a few years earlier for an independent internship as an undergraduate student) in the last years of a prolonged 10-year civil war and an economic boycott by the U.S. government that had left the country economically devastated.  We both knew that consumer goods were few and far between.  Nicaraguans would stand in line for hours to find even basic goods like bread and milk.  So, we decided that our best plan was to take as much as possible with us.  Shipping was pretty much out of the question, as experience had shown that goods sent by boat or overland would take months to clear customs or would just disappear in transit.  We figured that our best bet was to hit the Goodwill stores for used suitcases and pay the cost of extra luggage with the airline. 

 Did I say extra luggage?  We ended up travelling with 10 checked bags and two carry-on pieces each!  In one of the checked bags was a bulky desktop computer monitor, jammed as securely as possible amongst assorted clothing.  I hand carried the computer itself – one of those early 386, 32-bit microprocessors with 5 ¼” floppy disk.  The rest of the suitcases were stuffed with a wide assortment of consumer and household goods – much of it in the form of wedding gifts and last-minute purchases.  Four of the ten suitcases weighed in at just under 100 lbs. each.

 We were lucky to be leaving from Washington D.C. and having a contact at the Nicaraguan Embassy there.  A visit to the acting consul with an itemized list of what we were taking got us an official letter stating, basically “Comrade Director of Customs. Here we have two professionals returning to Nicaragua to contribute to the glorious Sandinista revolution.  Do NOT touch any of the goods accompanying them!”  Worked like a charm, as we avoided a lengthy revision time at the airport accompanied by the application of possible heavy taxes.

 Of course, the journey there with this travelling circus of leather-bound goods was not to be easy.  Early in the morning of our departure, I ‘humphed’ the ten suitcases and carry-ons from a friends truck to the curbside at National Airport in D.C.  After getting them checked (we only checked the bags through to Miami, as there was a reputation of bags going to Nicaragua disappearing in the terminal)  passing through the different security checkpoints with our bulky carry-on.  It turned out that there was a requirement that I plug in the desktop computer at every checkpoint to make sure it was not a bomb.

 Now, if you have travelled much my air, especially internationally, you know that EVERYONE pushes the limit on the size of the carry-on.  I was no exception.  My carry-on backpack was loaded to the brim.  Our seats, of course, were at the very rear of the plane.  As I bumped my way down the aisle, I came upon an empty overhead compartment about halfway to the back and struggled out of the straps of the oversized backpack and swung it up to the compartment.  I had to wiggle and push and twist and turn the bag to finally get it as much inside the space as possible. The problem was, I couldn’t get the door to close.  Determined (there were people in the aisle behind me still waiting to get to their seats, I pushed and shoved on the door until…I heard a slight crack.

The hinge on the overhead compartment door had snapped off.  The door pretty much closed, though, so I left it in place and continued on down the aisle.  The entire journey from the front to the back of the aircraft had garnered quite a bit of attention from the rest of the passengers, so I was glad to finally settle into my seat.

 The plane readied for takeoff.  The Flight Attendants went about their business of making sure that everything was set when suddenly one of them discovered the broken hinge on the overhead where my bag was placed.  I sheepishly raised my hand when they asked whose bag it was.  They took it to the front to be checked for the duration of the flight.  They had to delay departure while a mechanic came on board to fix the hinge.  He couldn’t do it.  He finally duct-taped it shut. About a half-hour later the plane was finally able to head for the runway.  I reduced my size to about three feet tall and shrunk red-facedly into the farthest corner of my seat.

 The rest of the 12-hour plane trip from hell (various plane changes and layovers – it was the cheapest flight we could find) was…well…at least not as hellish as its start.  We did have to claim all ten checked bags in Miami, find a couple of luggage carts and wheel them across the length of Miami airport to check them into the next leg of the flight.  The plane stopped in Honduras, and we spent some tense time peering out of the window to guarantee that our luggage didn’t end up there.  We finally arrived in Managua around 9:30 at night and were able to get the pile of bags through customs (the letter from the consul worked!) and onto the humid and sweltering curbside where half the population of my wife’s hometown was waiting to greet her and her new gringo husband.

 So, is moving a nightmare?  It surely can be. Only once in all these years did I have the luxury of having a job that paid for shipping my stuff in a container when I returned to the U.S. for a brief period.  I had stuff stashed away in a storage bin for a number of years, but eventually got tired of having that monthly expense, so I ended up once again reducing my possessions to a few boxes and what I could fit in a suitcase. Will I ever move again?  Possibly.  Will I think about that the next time I come across something that “I just have to have!”.  Probably not.

 Oh well.