Where is my Letter?

Over the past two weeks I have been truly blessed to receive an abundant supply of letters and packages from you all back home. However, you may be wondering to yourself, “Why does he never write back?” The truth is I have been writing back quite consistently. Chances are if you are a consistent reader of this fine blog that I have written you at least once in the past few months. However, as of late my mail has not been getting through.
I thought perhaps I could shed some light on the situation for you. While I am clueless as to what happens to my letters after I drop them into the mail slot, if what happens at the post office before they are mailed is any indication then my letters have a better chance of reaching home if I stuff them in a bottle and throw them into the Indian Ocean.
Allow me to Explain
As follows are the events as they transpired on April 1, 2010
At 1:50 PM I bike into Ranomafana with this month’s collection of letters to send. The post office in Ranomafana occupies and optimistically large building on Ranomafana’s market square. The building’s stout concrete pillars and steel bar doors give off the charming impression that the place used to double as a prison, but I guess with all those precious stamps and postcards inside, basic aesthetics are a small price to pay for the added security. Securing my bike onto the building I stroll into the big lobby. This time I am lucky and there is an attendant behind the counter. During previous visits, postal workers had to be dragged away from their shopping to process my envelopes, that is if the person on duty can be located at all. Think of all the postcards I could have run off with while they were out!
This month I am mailing five envelopes. One packed with letters to various recipients in West Michigan addressed to my mother, another to my fellow PCV Jenny in Mali, and three that I am mailing for my friend Ashley. I am doing her this favor because conditions at her local post are somehow worse than they are in Ranomafana. According to Ashley her post ran out of high denomination stamps months ago so in order to send her modest-sized envelopes to the states she is forced to carpet both sides of them with nearly worthless sheets of stamps. She is also under the sneaking suspicion that insead of being flown to America, all her letters are accumulating in a very expensive heap under the clerk’s desk.
The first step in the postal process is the weigh in. Each little envelope is carefully weighed on a huge scale that appears to be designed to weigh sacks of potatoes. After each letter has its weight written on the corner, a ratty little chart appears from under the countertop and each weight is matched with its destination to arrive at a price. There is some disagreement as to where Mali is but the argument is settled after I point out the postman that it does not matter whether Mali is in Oceana or Africa, postage will be the same price either way. Amazingly this process takes 15 minutes and when he pulls out the calculator to add up the prices I decide to bop out for a snack.
Returning a few minutes later with a bunch of bananas he has only just come up with a total: 12180 Ariary. Both he and I know this is not what I will actually pay to have these letters sent. As I begin to peel my first banana he begins the process of marking up each of the letters. You see none of the amounts listed on the ratty little chart actually corresponds to any stamp value in Madagascar. For example a 5 gram letter to America is 1900 Ariary. There is no 1900 stamp. As far as I can tell stamps come in the following values: 2000, 1500, 1100, 180, and 80. Oh and don’t be fooled by the stamps themselves, many of the stamps are still listed in Malagasy Francs, a currency that went out of circulation six years ago but the stamps are still hanging around. The conversion rate from Francs to Ariary is 5 to 1 so even though the stamp says 900 on it, it’s really only worth 180. My letter to Mali is 2740 Ariary. Try doing that in your head. You can see how stamping five envelopes can take one guy with a pocket calculator quite a while.
Twenty minutes later I am through with my bananas and am leaning uncomfortably on the Formica counterpace because although the lobby is as large as my house and people obviously do plenty of waiting here, there are no chairs, just lots of blue tile. The post man has taken my letters to the back room and is now searching through his stamp book to see if he can find the stamps he needs to make the numbers work. I have already been given a new total of 12380 Ariary but this is not what I will actually pay either. In my boredom I have begun to make faces at the kids playing on the porch in front of the office.
At 2:30 eight German tourists march in to the post office in their shiny new hiking boots, kaki pants and safari hats. As they begin fingering the warped postcards on the metal rack the postal worker jumps up to help them. They each want three or four cards and the stamps to go with them. (Post card stamps are 1680 so that’s relatively easy math, one 1500 and one 900). Thankfully another postal worker has appeared from behind the scenes with my stamps. He lays them out with my envelopes and I set to work licking and sticking. The Germans at this point have taken out their cameras and are taking pictures of the postal worker organizing the stamps to their post cards (I’m serious). Since each of my letters requires any where from 2 to 6 stamps and of course all the stamps a much to large to fit nicely into the top right corner so the stamps need to be placed haphazardly on the front and back sides of the envelope being careful not to cover any of the addresses written on them. I finally get my final price of 12440, but they don’t have any change so I fork over 12500 and call it good.
At 2:45 I finally depart the post office having sent my mail. One can only hope that the rest of their journey is a little bit less complicated. As a matter of note, this entire mess could be avoided by the use of Areograms or Passeros which are pre-stamped international envelopes one just writes on and sends. Although advertisements for these precious items paper the lobby, the post workers in Ranomafana (and at Ashley’s site) seem not to have heard of them.

Hope you all get mail from me soon!

After writing this post I received word that a pile of mail arrived at home, go figure.