Last July, Eric and I drove out to Lake Victoria to pick out an old fishing canoe as our anniversary gift to one another. We saw an old one with lots of holes, half-sunk and rotting away on the banks of the river, with several pieces of trash floating in its mucky water. It was the one for us.
This sounds like a strange anniversary gift, I know. But we had a project in mind, so we got the help of several locals to load the boat on top of the truck, unsure if we could make it home with the huge load. We were told to have an "African heart" and that it would all work out. Our carpenter friend rode along with us, calling out the window to everyone along the way who were giving us strange looks, "Da flood is coming! This is Noah!" Despite the excitement, we managed to avoid all traffic police and we took every bump and pothole along the way as slow as we could, and we made it home with our rickety boat in one piece.
It was not in one piece for long. After unloading our rotting treasure, our carpenter cut the canoe in half and there we left it, sitting in our yard waiting for the wood to dry out. Several weeks later, the carpenter came back and nailed a few planks into each side of the boat to make shelves. And viola! Our anniversary gift to each other - now a unique bookshelf with a story - adorns the corner our dining room and may just be our favorite piece of furniture.
