African Garage Sale Consultant

I spent this evening at Christina's house in my new role as garage sale pricing consultant. Apparently I am getting a reputation for having some knowledge of fund-raising and so spent three hours sipping chai tea and trying to put a sticker price on some wonderful African art and knickknacks.

Christina is an amazing and mystical person. I really feel drawn to her--she is an artist, a photographer, a geologist, an "energy worker", a whirlwind of energy herself...and yet she always radiates a lovely calmness. Also, I enjoy listening to her South African accent. There is a strong possibility that we could become good friends.

Anyway, she is fund-raising for another trip to Africa (we have that in common). I quote from her brochure advertising both her garage sale and her slide show lectures: "...She will be joining a group of Energy Workers from Canada and the United States touring South Africa to explore the wisdom of the Sangomas (traditional healers),exchange information and healing skills with other healers, and do energy work in Kliptown Township, Soweto."

My main challenge tonight was deciding on prices for objects I had no real idea what their true value was.

What price do you put on a fifty-year-old Zulu smoking pipe that also has a barbed spear-tip on the end? (It's handy and multi-functional for the Zulu warrior in your life.)

What about a beaded palm frond whisk for stirring up home-made beer? Or a stone coffee-pot from Oman? An antique wooden potion bottle? Um, or a round sort of bowl made of camel skin with a pointy metal implement attached that not even Christina knows the function of?

There were wooden scultures, seed necklaces,Omani fish-gutting knives, batik shirts, beautiful books, a cast-iron cauldron, and even some modern packaged witch-doctor fortune-telling bones. Some of these things would be murder to get through customs nowadays, not to mention the trouble of shipping or carrying them all the way to Canada.

Was Christina SURE she wanted to sell all these things, even for a fund-raiser?

Yes. She is paring down. Simplifying. She has had the pleasure and energy of owning these things (and living in places like Jordan, Oman, and Africa) and now it is time to move on. She wants freedom from things. She has even recently done some journal-burning(!)...that is something that would be very hard for me to do.

I like the philosophy of paring down. It clashes wildly with my collecting-junk-to-sell soul, but I do admire it. I was happy to help her get things ready for the big sale which I will miss because I'll be in Africa myself that weekend.

I did get a preview though and I did buy a small rosewood carving of a bird. I also took away as a gift for my time and er, um "expertise", a wooden comb from Oman, an impossibly lovely- to-touch wooden spoon made by an African artist that she knows, and a small chunk of amethyst from her amazing mineral collection.

Right now her husband works as a geologist in Africa: six weeks there and then back to Canada for three weeks, and then he flies back again. That is one brutal commute. All you city-dwellers take note---your commute is not as bad as it seems.