I love moving companies.  They save me a lot of back-ache and unnecessary lactic acid in my muscles.  They also save me the stress of trying to organise bakkies, trailers, people to help us move stuff and more.

We've never used a moving company to actually pack our stuff, though, because no one takes care of your stuff like you would and that's just the truth.  (Or at least very close to the truth - there are few exceptions)

But the thing is, these guys are overworked in this country.  Our particular team got to our old house at around 08h30 in the morning and had all our stuff in our new house (40 or so kilometers away) by about 12h15.  They then had another 2 houses to move that day.  What makes it worse is we don't have as much stuff as you'd fine in the average house.  After all, we're young, we'd barely been living there 2 years and I don't accumulate stuff (although Tanya does!)

Now imagine moving 3 houses worth of stuff in a day?  Now imagine going to bed between 23h00 and midnight.  Now imagine waking up early the next day to start all over again.  Getting the picture?

The last company we used, one of the movers told me that they sometimes sleep in the back of the van because they get back to head office to late to still get transport home.

Starting to paint a pretty grim picture, isn't it?

On the plus side, these guys looked like they genuinely enjoyed their work and took pride in it.  They also make substantially more (I'm assuming) than your average African employed in a labour-intensive industry.  So that's good I guess.  I just know I wouldn't want that life.  So it's a friendly reminder to me to be thankful for my life.  Maybe it can work for you too :)