My New Hobby

I've been appointed the official furniture-buyer. But in a country where there is no Ikea, Home Depot, or even Wal Mart, furniture buying looks a lot more like furniture designing. Every piece of furniture is made from scratch by local workers. When we need a desk, chair, or cabinet, we have two options:
1. Tell the craftsman that we want a cabinet, and then be happy with whatever he creates.
2. Make extremely detailed plans for the craftsman, then prepare ourselves for a final product that falls within a 10-30% deviation from the original plan, depending on the craftsman.

Most of the time we have fairly specific furniture in our head, so we opt for #2 and pray for the best. The result so far has been a desk that you could stand at, a shelving unit that almost fits in the space it was built for, and an elephant-sized cupboard (okay, baby elephant) that we had to turn on its head to move into place. That last one was mostly my fault, though. I didn't measure the doorway.

Anyway, in order to facilitate this process I started tinkering with Sketchup. It's a lot of fun, not to mention practical. It takes me about as long to make a model on the computer as it would with pencil and paper, but the computer version is 3D and accurate to the milimeter.

So here are some of my recent Sketchup projects:

Queen size bed that turns into a bunk bed

Desk with removable computer shelf and a door rather than drawers because drawers stick in rainy season.

 kitchen shelving

 display case with storage underneath

 the aforementioned "baby elephant"

Obama, President of America?

One evening I was sitting outside with a delivery guy, waiting for my landlord to show up so we could load the materials into his stock room. I started chatting with the delivery guy, and the conversation quickly took the inevitable turn towards football (soccer), in this case the Americas Cup. After asking me what my favorite team was, and realizing that I know basically nothing about football, he asked me an interesting question. This question led to a conversation that lasted probably 10 minutes. Here is the abridged version:

Delivery Guy: So Obama, he is the president of all of america, right?

Me: No, just the United States. The other countries have their own presidents.

Delivery Guy: Each state has it's own president, but Obama is over all of them, right?

Me: Well, first of all you have to realize that, whereas in french one third of the world is lumped into a continent called "'l'amerique," anglophones divide that land mass into two parts, North America and South America. And there's generally understood to be a third subdivision known as Central America.

[the guy gives me a completely blank look]

Me: Ok, think of the top half of "america." [faint glimmer of recognition] Okay, just in that part of "america," there are three independent countries. Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Obama is the president of the United States, Canada and Mexico each have their own presidents.

Delivery Guy: But Obama is in charge of the others?

Me: No, they are independent

Delivery Guy: But aren't there 52 states in america, and then Obama is in charge of them all?

Me: Well, the problem is that people from the United States call themselves "Americans" rather than "United Statesians," so it makes Obama sound like the president of more than he really is. The United States is divided into 50 states, which are like our "regions" here, and each one has it's own governor just like the regions here have governors. Obama is over all of them.

Delivery Guy: So in the americas cup, all of those teams are from different states?

Me: No, they are all different countries, most of them from the south half of "america"

Delivery Guy: And Obama is in charge of all of them?

Me: No, they are all independent.

Delivery Guy: Different states?

Me: No, different countries

etc. etc. etc.

At the end of the conversation I think he still was not quite convinced that Obama is not the president of the entire western hemisphere! He is so celebrated here that they imagine him to rule half the world, if not all of it.

One quirk that contributes to this misunderstanding is the fact that here the president is often referred to as the "Chief of the State." Instead of the national government being called "the Federal Government," It is called "The State."  It is natural then for people here to confuse "state" with "country" and assume that if Obama rules 50 countries, he must be pretty powerful.

Whoopsy

Remember the parable about building on sand? Jesus warned against building our lives on an unsure foundation, comparing it to a house built on sand.

We witnessed a dramatic illustration of that principle while we were in the capital city. Next to the driveway of the apartment where we were staying was a wall. It was on the edge of an embankment approximately 5 feet high which had been roughly reinforced with bricks. On the other side of the wall, a semi truck (lory) was being loaded up with several tons of used clothing, compressed and then wrapped into tight bales.

We aren't exactly sure what happened next, but one thing is sure. The wall, and much of the ground underneath it, gave way. The trailer rolled on it's side and fell the 5 feet unto the driveway below, taking the cab (tractor) with it. A car parked below the wall was instantly compacted to about 3 feet high under the weight of the tipped trailer. Fortunately no one was in it.

The driver was in the cab when it took the plummet. He amazingly walked away unharmed.

We praised God that no one was hurt, then started snapping pictures!