The Most Comfortable Chairs in Burkina

We’ve been hard pressed to find comfortable chairs here in Burkina. We found some nice ones at IKEA, but despite the fact that it is a global company, IKEA does not yet have a store in Burkina. The nice thing about IKEA products is that they come in pieces in nice compact packages that are much handier for shipping and transporting than furniture products that are already assembled. So when we were back in Canada last fall, we bought a couple of those comfortable IKEA chairs (the Poäng ones), along with a footstool for Kathy.

Kathy thought we could fit all the pieces into one of our large suitcases to take back to Burkina. But we couldn’t. Even our largest suitcase was a little too small. A call to Air France revealed that we could ship an oversize piece of baggage for an extra $300. So I packed both chairs and the footstool into a large, cardboard box, taped it up well, and swathed it in plastic wrap. There, that was easy!

Unfortunately, when we got to the airport and tried to check that box in, we were informed that there was also a weight limit of 32 kgs for oversize baggage, and we unfortunately were 6 kgs over that limit. So we had to get on the plane for Burkina without it and leave Josh to take it back to his place. There, he could cut open the box, take out the footstool and a few other items to lower the weight to 32 kgs, tape and wrap it back up, and wait for another opportunity to get it to us.

In December, we learned of a friend from Canada coming over to Burkina to work at an orphanage. He said that he’d be willing to take our box as extra baggage. Josh met him at the airport. For some reason, the box was still nearly 2 kgs over the weight limit and Air France kicked up a fuss until our friend revealed that he was going to help out at an orphanage in Burkina Faso. Well, that was different! For that, they were willing to bend the rules a bit. And we finally got our chairs :)

Are they ever nice!