As we drove out of the little village of Sarkin Maja, away from the home of Yaro and his mother, towards a nearby village to deliver another consignment of 265 Long Lasting Insecticide Nets, we are again hit with the realisation that these nets have and will continue to save lives that might otherwise have been stolen away by malaria.
There was a time, not all that long ago, when thrift stores and consignment shops were seen exclusively as the domain of penny-pinching grandmas.
It never occurred to me you might have consignment shops in a country not so long ago dominated by the drab dress of the former Soviet Union.
Or the once "hideous" lamps she calls Hollywood Regency, which she got for $45 each at a consignment store and remade by cutting down the long necks and replacing the wide 1950s shades with rectangular ones, for $165 each.
A consignment of iron ore from Brazil takes twice as long to reach Shanghai as from Australia.
"They would take a car in on consignment, sell it and play games with you for as long as they could," Rudisill said.
"When you put a car out on consignment, and it has not been returned to you after a long period of time, you can draw your own conclusions," said Mr. Cohen, who is a money manager.
The Indian troops help with another vital function as well – maintaining order when the water is dispensed to long lines of people jostling to fill their jerrycans from each 20,000 litre consignment of water.
Not long after that day, I sold a mess of old clothes and shoes at consignment stores and on Ebay and made a promise to myself to use the money for something more meaningful.
Sometimes the wait can be long, but often the amount of money that is paid for clothes at a consignment shop is higher than what would be paid at a second-hand store.
