Packing Out!

Saturday, May 31st comes early when it is your packing out day. Your thoughts might be this will be an easy process with all that CAC does for us but it is not easy at all.

It all started back in March when the school held a "Getting out of Cairo" informative meeting. The 30 of us who are leaving plus their spouses crammed into the meeting room and listened for 2 hours about all we need to do to plan our exit. They handed out paperwork some of it was simply informative, somewhere documents that our future employer will need:

1. I worked at CAC for some many years
2. I had continuous health coverage
3. I do not have a criminal record in Egypt...you know the basics

and

some were mandatory things we needed to do before June 2 (last day of school is June 5) like get signatures from 12 different people that stated we had:

1. paid our housing bills although still using the housing utilities
2. handed in our housing keys although we still are living there
3. school keys although we still need those too
4. shut off our cell phones although we still need it
5. not stolen the decrepit couch, the brass lamps, or the telephone
6. school id badge although still need to get on campus to work

After all the “You must dos” to get your last paycheck we were informed on the packing out procedures. You need to get 3 quotes from packing companies and their quotes need to contain x, y, and z. Of course this quote needs to be to your home of record...the place you said you lived when you took the job. Now 99% of International teachers actually never ship to their home of record. We listed Maine and are shipping to Colorado...friends listed Columbia and are shipping to Canada. So the process is flawed from the beginning. You are asking all these companies to quote you on something you are never going to use. The school provided 9 companies they would except quotes from.

I emailed all 9 so I could get a price range to submit to the school. They will pay the cheapest quote of the 3 you submit.

The first quote response was $1000.00 to Maine. Wow cheap I am excited.
The second quote was $4500.00 to Maine. Wow I am confused. What is first quote doing...using donkey carts, old rags for packing, Joe's boat?
The third quote asks where Maine is...I explain...they tell me there is no state called Maine...ok I know a lot of people have no idea where it is but they know it exists. 5! emails later they still tell me there is no location called Maine. Not having them pack us out.
The fourth quote is very detailed and listed all the things they do for you. $3500.
The fifth quote is the same as the fourth but $3450.
The sixth quote is $2100 and tells me nothing about what it covers.
The last 3 never even respond to me...or come to find out anyone else.

So we meet with the 4th quote...DHL and Isabelle is great, she is German and we all know about the stereotypical efficient German...she is...it was a great pleasure working with her.

They were our 2nd highest quote so school will not pay for the total bill even though it is the most reliable company. Why they do not just go through this process for us and pick a shipper no one knows? Out of the 30 people leaving 25 are using DHL. The other 5 their future school is taking care of the shipping.

So as I said this all started a few months ago. I decided on the company and then had to actually tell them it is going to Colorado this was no problem but the quote was going to be a different price which I expected.

The house was left decorated and livable until after the Gorneau and Wilson visits (still waiting for the Wilson blog entry). As soon as they left along with Mike I started to rip apart the house. In 2 days I had packed 25 boxes, took down all the art work, folded the carpets, sold all the items we were not taking, removed the plants, emptied every cabinet except the kitchen, moved it all to one room in the house and felt good about the move. The house stayed like this for 3 weeks. Mike came back and we worked on his clothes and what he was taking on our next trip.



Thanks Dustin for breaking down the bikes!


This weekend I emptied the contents of the kitchen on the dining room table, Mike and I purchased all those last minute must haves for the "future" home, and made sure that everything that was staying was coming with us or getting thrown away.

Took all the un boxed items and threw them on the living room floor.


The pillows were 1 cbm all by themselves.


During this process our air conditioner broke down and the temp here is 105 degrees! Ugh HOT! So neither Mike nor I slept for 2 nights because the other bedrooms were packed with our belongings. Housing does not care much about the needs of the departing employees. So I had to call and email to get it fixed. A year ago the response time was an hour...now....48 hours.

While our house was empty and looking sad the other departing staff were letting the movers do all their packing. This concept is so foreign to me I still cannot wrap my head around it. Most people leave their rooms setup and tell them yes or no to each item they pick up, as I said I had it all in one room so no questions of what was going to be packed.

We had heard some interesting stories from the people who move every few years. One couple was telling us that they were running from room to room explaining each thing to pack, sounds like more work to me and exhausting and stressful. When they arrived at their new home they were unpacking boxes that contained empty Tupperware (I packed other things inside Tupperware) which increased their allowed shipping allotment but I digress. So they were unpacking boxes and smelt something nasty not smelly feet nasty but rotted carcass nasty! The movers had packed their hamster in its cage. While they noticed the hamster was missing they though that the new owner, their maid, had taken it.

Others opened a box and it was their trash! So I took no chances of what was getting packed. Mike thought I as crazy to pack as much as I did. I was nervous that no one could pack like I could and that they would use extra boxes with wasted space. I conceded to Mike and stopped packing the kitchen items with his voice chanting "You will never know how good or bad others pack until you let them."

So I left the bookcase.

Thursday night they dropped off boxes, paper for glass, cardboard for insulation, and tape. Saturday morning at 10AM the packers show up and start the process. 4 men set to work like the Tasmanian devil. We explained to Ahmed, the lead packer, what needed to be packed and taped shut. We stood in the kitchen door watching them pack. We noticed they had their different roles to play and the "small object guy" was fascinating to watch. He had a rhythm and system that had 4 boxes packed in 15 minutes. I was impressed. I did notice that he did not stack anything inside other things so I was glad that I had done that ahead of time. Mike conceded to me that I was right and should have packed the way I did with the disclaimer of "see now you know."

Mike and I had a bet on how long it would take them to pack us out. He said 2 hours and I said 4. After an hour of packing I told Mike that he might be right and after 2 hours they would be done. At noon they had packed all of our pillows, artwork, kitchen stuff, scuba gear, odd shaped items, rugs, alabaster, etc....for a total of 46 boxes. We decide it would be 3 hours because the other room was mostly boxed. We were also trying to guess how many total boxes we would have. Out friend Danny packed out last week. He arrived with 4 boxes and left with 25 so if he were any indicator we would be leaving with 174…we came in with 29 boxes.
They took a smoke break and he dismissed 2 of the guys to another flat to pack up. There were a total of 3 flats being packed out this am. They took another 2 hours to finish packing, clean up, and move the boxes to one location in each room. 2PM they left and as everyone already knew I was right with the 4 hours... How does Mike live with me? If the four guys had stayed it might have been 3 hours. If the room was bigger and all 4 could have fit it might have been 3 hours. If we had moved all the boxes out into the living room area it might have been 3 hours. But it was 4!

So the house is boxed and labeled into 75 pieces so we popped into our neighbors who are packing out tomorrow to see if we could offer our advice on how DHL packs. OH MY GOD! the place looked like a bomb hit it. There were papers shattered all over the floor, laundry needing to be done, baby toys everywhere, and dishes in the sink. To their defense they have a wee one who takes up all of mom's time with her teething. We helped for a while and then went to take a nap. So here I sit with my borrowed Mac from school writing one of our last Cairo blogs. We sit and wait for Cairo time to arrive...Cairo time is when the city comes to life. There is a ban on trucks in Maadi and the medium sized trucks cannot come in until after 8PM and they hold 4cbm. The larger trucks cannot come in until after midnight. Keir packed out today and he has 3 different shipments and a 2 year old so they are collecting him first. I am sure we will have our doorbell ringing at 2AM.


Very creative with using the boxes as tables.











They showed up at about 10 and dragged all our boxes to the curb where they sat for 3 hours. We hope they make it all the way to Colorado.