Alex had been waiting so long that he had learned how to play “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” on his cell phone. The container full of dental equipment from Canada was supposed to have arrived on Friday some time in the morning. It is now supper time on Wednesday and the container still isn't here. The shipping company only gives you a couple of hours to unload the container until they want it back, so a bunch of neighbours have been on call and are now waiting around for the container to arrive. We've cleared away some space in the cluttered warehouse to make room for the new donations. Some of the older donations include such “useful” items as hand knit scarves and toques for all those nippy mornings we get around here, and bags full of stuffed animals. Reports say that this container will, mercifully, be only dental supplies and equipment.
I have just finished my second day of teaching English and Steph has been killing time waiting for the container just like everyone else. Alex calls Regino for the fourth time and he assures him that the truck is on its way but that it has been stuck in a traffic jam for a while. More waiting. We watch the chickens flap up to the hood of a truck and then up to a branch to roost. The rooster clucks and struts around the gravel parking lot. The night watchman has already arrived, apparently the rooster is an early warning system for intruders. Although, I'm not entirely sure how much good it will do because the night watchman will probably only ply the intruders with the hard candies that he carries around in his pocket. Despite the fences and razor wire all around the Sonrisa's clinic in Pentoja, it is apparently necessary to employ a night watchman.
The truck has finally arrived, but we are still waiting on Regino, who has the official documents. Regino arrives with a big pair of red bolt cutters and the men begin circling the back of the container like moths. The women stand back waiting for their brothers and husbands to stumble across some way to unload this colossal blue steel box. Someone brings out a couple of boards nailed together that will serve as a ramp. Someone else brings a McGyvered light fixture to put inside the container. It quickly shorts out and needs to be re-wired. At last the unloading can begin. Fuelled by testosterone, Christmas Meringue music and the energy stored in waiting, men hurl the boxes down from the truck and pandemonium ensues in the warehouse. Sometimes the chaos forms into a line and the boxes pass from hand to hand and are stacked on top of old dentist's chairs covered in dust, waiting to be rehabilitated. But before too long, their favourite song will come on again and they will starting hurling and dropping the boxes in some attempt to outdo one another. The women retreat to the office and return with coffee. The box hurling halts briefly each time a three hundred pound dental chair needs to be unloaded. Four men walk the chair down the ramp while another steps on the bottom of the ramp so that it won't slip out. The chair is slammed onto a board with wheels attached to it and is wheeled off to the nether regions of the warehouse. The hurling commences once again and the mountain of dental supplies continues to grow.
After an hour or so we are half way through the container and it is time to stop for beer. Four one-litre bottles of light beer arrive on the back of a forty year old motorcycle. Everyone stops and drinks until the beer is gone. Some get into the container and dance a little bit. And like the wheels of some chaotic train engine beginning to turn, the boxes come flying down the length of the container once again and it is a mad scramble to find spaces to pile them inside the warehouse. After another hour and a half there is only a couple of large chairs left to jockey into the increasingly limited warehouse space. Then, as if by magic the world of the container is drawn away and we are left waiting once again for cabs to take us home.