Ah me! What hard work it is to start an expedition! What with hurrying through the baking heat of the fierce relentless sun from shop to shop, strengthening myself with far-reaching and enduring patience for the haggling contest…correcting volumes, making up accounts, superintending the delivery of purchased articles, measuring and weighing them…such labors were unremittingly mine for a month.
-How I Found Livingstone, Henry Morton Stanley
It took me only five minutes to buy my supplies. Hajj Bashir’s agent in Nahud had already gotten for us all he thought we’d need on the forty day trail- ground cloth for sleeping, cotton saddle pad for riding, tea glass for drinking. You eat aseeda with your right hand fingers, thus no need for a spoon. But he forgot the one thing I figured I couldn’t live without, so I went to the pharmacy and was directed to the ladies side of the counter. That’s where I was told I’d find my vaseline, sold by weight and scooped out of a tub and smeared into purse-size jars. I wish I’d known then that I’d need a lot more than just one. I wish I’d bought the whole tub. The camel could have carried it no problem, and I could sure have used a refill by Day 2.