Through the generosity of the Remedy program of UCSF and some additional wholesale medical supply orders, we had a large amount of medical supplies to bring to Macha with us. The list of needs was provided by the medical director here via email -- something that we have already looked into automating via some sort of web-based "list" and currrent needs/inventory of these items (suggestions welcome on how to accomplish this in the comments).

But this post isn't particularly about those supplies, it's about reuse. I recall Earth Day becoming quite popular in the early 1990's and the slogan of "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle." While we have been well informed and do a respectible job in separating out and organizing our recycling, one particular tale of "Reuse" sticks out.

An old roommate of mine moved to Cambridge from Paris with his French company. His boss also moved from France a few years ago and was moved by a logistics company based in the German-speaking part of France. After his move to the US, we collected his used moving boxes for a move within Cambridge. Then we made another apartment move during the winter and reused most of the boxes. Then, we packed up everything and headed to California. Of course we could not leave without a number of the boxes from our friend. Finally for us, we performed one more move within California and hopefully can sit tight for a while. But finally for this box, we reinforced it with a couple of more layers of cardboard, plenty of packing tape and filled it full of our medical supplies. While we were convinced that somehow the box would not make it with us to Macha, we were amazed when it appears on the tarmac in Livingstone, having last been checked at SFO.

Sure enough, the box appeared on the tarmac in Zambia and made it with us to customs. Unfortunately we were pulled aside and asked, "What is in the box, could you open it please?" We actually had a list of most of the contents of the box and were able to produce this to the customs agents. We were hoping that the giant labels of "Medical Supplies" would help us glide through the customs process. They still wanted to open the box, but we did not have a method of resealing the box and neither did the customs agents. With a few shrugs and glances at the packing list, they sent us on our way. The box made it finally to Macha, where its next caretaker can hopefully make good use of it.