Post Offices

I had the best of intentions - really! I was going to write letters and postcards to all of you! But then reality dawned. Let me explain:

Uganda doesn’t have mailboxes conveniently placed in front of grocery stores and pharmacies, and they only sell stamps at post offices. The downtown Kampala P.O. is terribly hard to get to, so if I need stamps, I usually stop in Wobelenzi (near Luwero) on our way home from town.

We send our mail by putting it in the “To Post” box at the Cornerstone Head Office, but only if we’ve actually remembered to bring the letters in to town – and if you forget more than once, that letter’s going to be sitting for a very long time! I have letters lying around, for one reason or another, that I wrote in May!

Even if you do remember, it’s not a guarantee – last week I found 3 postcards in our “AHI Mail” box at Cornerstone that were supposed to have been posted last month – Sorry Beth Day, John Shimer, and someone else who’s name escapes me at the moment!

This week I was determined to finally send out everything. We pulled into a quiet Wobelenzi parking lot, and I entered the equally deserted-looking post office. After a few moments of peering around, I spotted someone in the back room, and tried to get her attention. She sauntered slowly out…
“Hello, I need to buy some stamps please.” (Looking through my stack) “I guess one letter and one post card.”

“To where?”

“The U.S. please”

Hmmm, hmmm, rustle, rustle…”The US is in Europe?”

“No, North America.”

“Oh, I see, Europe.”

“No, Madam, in North America.”

“Ah, ok, ‘Rest of World’. Ah, but we don’t have any post card stamps. Someone bought them last week. So you take 2 letter stamps.”

Letters cost almost twice as much as postcards, so I say, “No, no, just one letter stamp please. Do you have smaller stamps to combine for the post card? Like 1,400/- and 400/-?”
More confusion. I finally convince her I can buy three small stamps to add up to the 1,800/- My total was 3,500/-, and I hand her a 5,000/- bill.

She follows with the Ugandan tongue-clicking. Her face screws up: “You have something smaller?”

“No.” (really, the post office doesn’t have 1,500/- in change?!)

Rustle, rustle – going through drawers and books. She finally finds my change.

I slip the letters in the box, and leave. About 8 more of you will be receiving a missive from Uganda soon!

That is, if they make it out of the Wobelenzi post office…