My family in India mailed me a parcel over two weeks ago and this past Friday after multiple trips to the post office/courier office, I made one final trip to the local courier office to enquire about the status of my parcel. My family had sent arts supplies and toys for the children I teach at Menagesha on Saturdays and also some tasty treats such as Badam Halwa (an almond dessert with saffron) – which is my grandmother’s specialty.
You see, in Ethiopia, there are no street addresses and by owning a house, you do not automatically get to receive mail from the Ethiopian postal authority. You must have a separate PO Box. The house that we are renting in Addis does not have a post office box and our landlord indicated that he has applied for one, but it has been quite some time and he still has not heard. As such, I had my family in India mail the parcel to my office. In the past, the post office would call once the parcel arrived and deliver it to my office.
Let’s just say that this time, something a little different happened.
After multiple trips to post office, I discovered that the parcel had actually been sitting there for over a week but nobody had sent a notice to indicate the parcel’s arrival. When I politely asked why nobody contacted me with a notice to let me know the parcel had arrived, I was faced with an angry manager who yelled at me, telling me that they did send a notice and that I simply chose to ignore it. I assured him that I checked with the staff at the office and that we had received no such notice. He told me that he would prove to me it was sent. As he scurried off in a dramatic flourish, another man tapped me on my shoulder and asked me to follow him for a moment. He told me, “I have to get my job done and then go. You deal with your issues later.” I had no idea what he was talking about. I followed him to a corner of the room where the parcel was on the floor. He asked me if it was my parcel, to which I said it was. He said that he had been called to inspect it and proceeded to rip the box open throwing the contents about the room with items landing on the floor.
It was like one of those moments on Ally McBeal back in the day when Ally would see the dancing baby. I was having a complete out-of-body experience as my parcel flew about me – all the while thinking – “this cannot really be happening can it?” Midway through his merciless search, he finally indicated that he was a customs officer and asked if there were any electronic items in the parcel that should be subject to duty. I bleated out “no only pencil crayons and almond halwa”. Disregarding my response, he turned to the parcel with renewed vigour in the dogged pursuit of electronic items. When he found none, he stuffed the items into the shredded box and added one piece of tape to bind it shut, sauntering off with a bounce in his step. If he had a mustache, I would picture him twirling it like Jafar from Aladdin.
After this debacle, I returned to the other desk where the manager and the postal employees were going all CSI in their efforts to prove that they had sent a notice to my office indicating the parcel was here. You see, there are no computer systems at the post office. Parcels are recorded in a large notebook and the notices are filled out by hand. Thousands of parcels arrive daily and the records are all kept in notebook after notebook after notebook.
Finally, after 15 minutes of searching, they came to the conclusion that the notice was never sent and that the parcel had been sitting here idle for over a week. They made no attempt at that stage to apologize and I kindly asked to speak to their manager to explain the situation. Noticing that I did not intend to leave until I spoke with someone, they asked me to move to another room so that we could all collectively figure out a solution. So my shredded parcel and I made our way to the adjoining office. Onlookers in the packed foyer / hall of the post office stared in amusement as if to say in their most condescending voice “Look at the sad farenji and his shredded parcel.”
When I arrived at the office, still in a state of shock at the angry manner at which the manager yelled at me earlier and the customs officer ripped up my box, I was told by the manager that the boss would arrive. One hour later, there was still no sign of the “Boss”. With all the mystery in which this “boss” was shrouded, I half expected Bruce Springsteen to show up and break into song or for an Ethiopian Ashton Kutcher to emerge and yell PUNKED! After repeated calls, the “Boss” showed up and was apprised of the situation by the other employees who huddled around her in a corner.
Suddenly she stepped forward and said that I should have some tea or water or coffee, as if that was why I waited for over an hour. She kept insisting and finally pressed a 1 liter water bottle into my hands. I simply told her that I wanted to let her know what happened and how I was treated.
She indicated that the relevant employees would be severely “punished” which shocked me! All I was hoping for was an actual apology or a partial refund on some of the shipping/courier charges as the parcel did not arrive in the time period promised by the postal authority. You see, this response of “punishing” unrelated employees is fairly typical here. When we had an awful stay at the Summerland in Bahir Dar in September and spoke with the manager, his only response was that he was going to punish someone. Punishment of an unrelated employee seems to be the way that suggestions or comments from the public are handled and I find that extremely troubling.
I told her that by no means did I want an employee punished, but that I simply wanted to report what happened earlier. She laughed at my naivete as if to say, “Silly Rabbit, Trix are for Kids.” After I made her promise that nobody would be “punished”, she informed me that she would come to my office on Monday to discuss in detail what they would do to rectify the situation and to remedy the poor treatment I had received in the post office. She kept inexplicably laughing and all of the employees kept saying things about me in Amharic. Let’s just say, I don’t think they were saying nice things.
I hobbled out of the office with my new bottle of water in one hand, dragging my shredded parcel thinking – stuff like this only ever happens to me.
Monday came and went.
No sign of a visit from the manager.
I called her and said that I no longer wished to discuss this matter – let’s just leave it alone. I asked her not to worry about it. She laughed her signature laugh as if to say, “I won” and assured me that nobody would be punished.
I hung up, leaned back in my chair, and sipped my newly acquired bottle of water, laughing at the lunacy of the situation. Ahhhh….good times.
