As part of my Bahia Street volunteer work, I set up a storefront on Greeting Card Universe last year. The site sells some charming original cards designed by Fio, of the Bahia Street Center. Every once in a while, I check in on the site, but it mostly takes care of itself, a “nickel-generator” for Bahia Street. Cards sell, and small amounts of commission money go to my favorite nonprofit.

So I was a bit puzzled to get a garbled email the other day, with “Greeting Card Universe Feedback” as the subject. The person’s name was Abuga Jones — is that a man or a woman?

Hello,
I’m interested in purchasing some Christmas card as a gift to some of my customers …..i will need like 50 pieces, could you kindly give me total cost………I will be responsible for the shipment of the card from your location using my private Shipping Company.So I want you to calculate for me what will be the total cost of the order the card,tax if included so once I have your reply for the total I will remit my credit card for you to charge for the total cost.so that you can have the order book right away.this is because i’m not in the state presently on offshore and i will not be back till 2 weeks time. I await your reply soon.

It sounded kind of weird, but I put that down to a non-English speaker, and I wrote back a polite reply:

Thank you for your interest in Bahia Street’s Brazilian Christmas cards. At the current time, we’re only offering them through Greeting Card Universe. They can send personalized cards out on your behalf, or you can order one batch of 50 at a discount.

best regards,

Margaret “Meps” Schulte
Bahia Street public affairs

I wasn’t expecting a reply, but Abuga wrote back fairly quickly:

Hello Thanks for the mail can you calculate 50 for me and let me know the amount and don”t worry about the shipping i will take care of that myself ok

“What an idiot!” I exclaimed to Barry. “I don’t want to be rude, but this person just doesn’t get it! Do you think it’s a scam?”

“Maybe, but it can’t hurt to tell them how much 50 cards would cost. Maybe they can’t do math,” said Barry, helpfully.

“Sure,” I muttered, “a business owner who can’t calculate the cost of a bunch of greeting cards.”

I sighed, and typed this out:

On Greeting Card Universe, 50 cards is $114.50, or $2.29 apiece. However, I can’t help you place the order. You’ll have to do that at www.greetingcarduniverse.com.

Finally, today, my friend Abuga revealed his hand. I was laughing so hard, I could hardly read this out loud to Barry:

Hello Margaret

How are you this morning i got the email you write to me and i ‘m so glad you gonna sale Greeting Card Universe for me I’m so much okay with the price of the Greeting Card Universe …..I will like you to know that the price is not a problem and i want you to know that i don”t have time because of my work to be doing that right now if you know that you want to help me i will send your my card information the price is not a problem which the $114.50.

More so you don’t have to worry about the shipping cos have already registered
with a shipping company that will come and pick the Greeting Card Universe up with a cooling van after you have done with them.

Christmas card cost $114.50
Shipping cost $850
Total cost $1100

NOTE: THE SHIPPING COST WILL BE FOR MY SHIPPER WHICH YOU WILL HELP ME TO SEND TO HIM VIA WESTERN UNION.THIS BECAUSE I’M STILL IN OFFSHORE NOW.

Let me know if this suit you if yes you can get back with me with this following information so i can remit my card to you.

YOUR FULL NAME
ADDRESS
PHONE NUMBER.

I await you quick reply…….

Barry and I once read an article about Nigerian scammers, and it described them as young men who get up in the morning, dress in nice clothes, and go to the Internet cafe, where they sit around with all the other nicely-dressed young men, sending scam emails. I can picture the fellow on the other side of my email exchange, sitting in one of those cafes, hoping that I will simply accept his fraudulent credit card payment and then wire the bogus “shipping charge” to his “shipper.”

Poor guy, he must be a beginner. Sure, people fall for this sort of thing, but they usually do it because of greed, and that means offering them thousands or millions of dollars. A woman in Oregon sent $400,000 dollars to a scammer over several years, because she was convinced that she’d get back $25 million. She became so obsessed, the only thing that stopped her from sending more money was that the police told her she’d be charged with money-laundering if she didn’t stop.

One reason she kept sending the money was the encouraging emails from George Bush and the President of Nigeria. That would set off my bullshit detector. As it is, “Abuga” has set off my bullshit detector with an $850 shipping charge on 50 greeting cards.

Unless I’m going to take up scambaiting as a time-consuming hobby, I think it’s time for me to stop writing back to Abuga. However, I’m considering sending this parting message:

Dear Abuga,
I don’t think the cooling van will be necessary. These are Brazilian Christmas Cards. They do not come with snow.

The conversations went like this: “You hungry?” “Yeah, I could chew my own leg off.” “Peanut butter OK?” “Absolutely!” And dinner would be peanut butter on tortillas on our laps. Again.

For two months, since our return from Burning Man, we’d been camping out. We slept in the back of the van and set up an outdoor kitchen under the boat. Our days, and evenings when we weren’t too tired to hold up our heads, were spent working.

Over the summer, we had removed every piece of hardware from the deck and temporarily sealed over 100 holes. By September, it was time to grind the rotted core around those holes, removing fiberglass and balsa and making horrible clouds of dust. The work required full protective gear, all the time — Tyvek suits, gloves, and respirators.

We emptied the boat of everything but tools. Our rented storage locker was crammed to the ceiling, and the boat was surrounded by plastic tote bins. The van was a total disaster, heaps of clothing divided into categories like “boatyard-skanky” and “going-to-town.” I nearly died of embarrassment when I thought I was going to a drive-thru with a friend, and we ended up at a pizza place instead. I was wearing boatyard-skanky instead of going-to-town clothes.

But the real storage challenge was the camp kitchen, located under the bow of the boat. The problem was, I just couldn’t stay ahead of the conditions.

When we first moved out of the boat, I fretted about the sun melting my chocolate. We rigged a tarp over the table, and within 24 hours, high winds had ripped it to shreds. So now I had to worry about hot sun and high winds.

I began the daily shade-shuffle: Moving my food bins from place to place several times a day, just to keep them cool.

After sun and high winds came the bugs, tiny, insidious flies that climbed into my bins and tried to get into my food. Now, in addition to working on the boat and shuffling my bins around, I had to clean the bins and repackage the food.

The days got shorter, so cooking had to be done in the dark with flashlights. I really hated those little bugs. They were completely invisible on a black skillet at dusk. Good thing I’m not a vegetarian. Good thing it was daylight when the black widow spider crawled into the Britta pitcher.

Then came the rains. I had put my canned goods in a big old cooler (no ice), and guess what? The cooler leaked! Now I had a nice collection of rusty cans. But there was some consolation — the bugs drowned, and I didn’t have to worry about keeping food in the shade — there was no sun.

The winds came back, and without a tarp over the stove, we couldn’t cook. Now things were looking a bit grim. We spent hours sitting in the van, knees against knees, watching the rain blowing sideways and fighting over the computer. Peanut butter tortillas began to appear more frequently on the menu.

The final straw was the cold. The van was warm, with a tiny space heater keeping us comfortable when the temperatures dropped into the low 20′s. But what about the kitchen? Grumbling, I bundled up and went outside, with a flashlight, to pack insulating items like flour and rice around glass bottles of vinegar and rose water.

When it was over — we moved back aboard the day before Thanksgiving — I realized that the camp kitchen had thrown challenge after challenge, but nothing insurmountable. There were no bears, no raccoons, and no food went bad. We didn’t starve or suffer vitamin deficiencies, and we only had to order pizza twice in two months.

Besides, the location was awesome. Our borrowed picnic table sat right on the water, so we could watch the parade of boats on the ICW. When dolphins came, especially at night, we heard them before we saw them. We were even far enough from most other people to give us a little privacy.

With the exception of no HVAC, poor cabinetry, a too-small refrigerator, and a leaky roof, we actually had an ideal kitchen. It had plenty of counter space — thanks to Val and Gigi. It had a great propane stove — thanks to Kris. It had a double sink (two dishpans) and running water — a half-gallon plant sprayer someone had abandoned at Burning Man. What more could you ask?

The next time I catch myself complaining about conditions, feel free to stop me. There are many people out there who don’t have peanut butter or rusty cans of artichoke hearts, or chocolate. We should all be so lucky.