Growing up my Granny wrote letters on a weekly basis, it was her weekly ritual-and extra long morning tea and letter writing. Who doesn't love getting a real letter? In this day an age email is the way to go, emails are nice...but snail mail can make anyone's week.
When I came to the Peace Corps, I thought to myself this would be a prime time get my letter writing grove on. I pledged to myself that I would write ever Saturday....I was doing really good for a while! Now, my letter writing is a little bit more sporadic.
The sporadic letter writing is not entirely my fault. A little jaunt to your local postal service isn't like back in the mother land....Going to the postal service takes good mental health readiness and a strong constitution.
The post office is a one stop shop for a lot of things: electricity, air time, all your postal needs, accessing your safe deposit box, wiring money and the Grannies of the village picking up their pension checks. Long story short, a lot is going on with one postal worker behind the counter.
I use the post office for buying stamps and picking up packages. Stamp buying is a feat to its self. The price of sending an average size letter to "The rest of the world" aka America is P8.00, if you want to send a letter to "Southern Africa" it is a different price,if you want to send to "other African countries" it is a different price...I am sure you get the picture. Needless to say, they have many different stamping options: You can get P4.90, P0.40, P1.00, P7.90....etc etc etc..
More often than not, I go to the post office and ask for "P8.00 worth of stamps" the postal worker shakes his head and says we don't have P8.00 stamps and then sighs a little and pulls our the stamp book to try and piece together P8,00 worth of stamps....
Piecing together P8.00 worth of stamps is harder than you think....I mean there are so many options when there are about 20 different postage stamp options. I say that with all honesty and frustrations--yes, you do have many options of stamps, but also sometimes the postal worker is in a hurry and wants to just give you two P4.90 stamps (and that means you are paying way way way over your stamping budget). In Harry Potter (book 4 I believe), Ms Weasley sends muggle mail to Harry's Aunt and Uncle....its kind of like that. You never know if it is going to make it. Have you ever sent a letter with literally the entire front covered in stamps?
And if you want an envelope full of stamps...do make sure to write to me! I promise that I will write you in return!
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