The mail in Kigali works. I can finally vouch for it personally.
It takes a while–one month, door to door, for a package from my mom. Which doesn’t sound so bad, except she thought she was paying for it to arrive in four days. Well, she did pay for that. What she forgot was the Africa factor, in which time expands, sometimes exponentially, and no one thinks it’s strange.
What else no one here thinks is strange is that you have to pay to pick up your package. The price seems to be in proportion, somehow, to the size of the package—a big one cost me 500-something francs, or a little more than a buck, and the small one 120 or so. When I asked why, they said it a security fee–to keep the package in a secured room. Which I thought was part of what I paid for when I rented the PO Box for a year, but no mind.
What does turn out to be true, everywhere, is that postmen are afflicted by curtness. It’s just impossible for them to be nice. I’m going to pretend it makes Kigali…familiar…
The upside of all this–sort of–is that I am chomping on some instant Cream of Wheat, cinnamon sugar style, and I am reminded what food tastes like when it consists most of chemicals and additives. Nasty, is the answer.
But I grew on on this crap, and so it’s nasty in a sweet, nostalgic way.
I can’t wait for the instant grits. Take me home…
when you think about it, it’s no different than picking up your mail from the main post office on canal street in new york.
enjoy the grits!
Shizen, I can’t even get a package twenty miles from me to arrive in less than ten days here. At that rate, I could have just driven to the dude’s house and picked it up myself.
HAHHA….. so true with postal services! They told me 5 to 10 business days; hmmm wonder what a ‘business day’ is in Rwanda! BTW, you asked for the instant Cr o Wheat which you hated as a kid too! Oh…Mojo…you are so right. Two weeks from an hr’s drive away for a shipment from a big company to me. I could have walked the 60 miles and back three times So, I was a little suspicious about this claim, but I could have filled the Priority Flat Rate box with bricks or feathers…would have cost the same, so I say go for it! LOL