Good Things
It made it!
I couldn’t be more pleased. Or duly impressed.
Ben figured out how to send me packages.
To those of you with mailboxes living in a country able to support the basic infrastructure of a postal service, you may not understand why I’m so impressed.
There aren’t addresses here in Tanzania, you see. Few roads have names, and directions are always relative. (I’m going to a friend’s tomorrow, and she told me just to tell her where I’ll be in town so that she can send a car to pick me up.) As such, I don’t have a house address—much less a mailbox—nor am I one of the privileged few with a PO box.
When people have asked for my address, I’ve explained this to them. I’ve told them that they’ll just have to wait until the summer or so when we set up a PO box.
Okay, they resign themselves, and concede to wait.
Well, everyone except Ben, that is. I didn’t think it was possible.
To add to my amazement, my package is completely in tact. I’ve heard horror stories about unscrupulous postal workers who routinely open up packages and scavenge whatever’s worth taking inside. (Addressing packages to ‘Sister Meaghan,’ inscribing religious symbols all over it, and writing in red ink are all supposed to bring just enough superstition to ward off wandering workers.)
Or maybe whatever’s inside my package is just so crushingly disappointing that even poor Tanzanian postal workers can’t be bothered to pilfer it. Probably.
We’ll see. Maybe I’ll even open it tonight.
Does this mean if we send love letters to the address on that box that you’ll receive them? How much perfume do you think I need to use so that it will still smell nice when it gets there?
Good questions. The first time that I went to the post office to pick up this package, they rifled through some letters, so initial results are promising. You may even be able to get away without the Marketing St, although there’s another Coca-Cola sign for the Post Office down the street that just points to some abandoned buildings in an empty field…
And lots. Err on the side of more, not less…