First mail

Yes that’s right… I received my first piece of mail today… A Christmas card from Bec S. Thanks doll! Of course it was for Matt as well, but it was addressed to me so I’m claiming it as my first piece of mail – Matt already had a heap of mail in one hit in December, it only took 11 days to get here. Plus he has another mystery one today. Anyway, these two airmailed envelopes have taken four weeks. Now they probably arrived a bit earlier – after all, we have just had the holiday period, which slows everything down; plus, we have to wait for someone from the AVI office to be bothered to get to the post office AND then call us to let us know we have mail. So there are a few factors contributing to the slow-mail business.

But I think mainly this is just another different, sometimes difficult thing about living in a developing country. Different people told us different things about the mail service. Some people said – don’t bother with posting anything, ever, it will take forever and even if it does get through it will probably have been ransacked. (I heard of someone having their embroidery thread pinched from a personal letter. Jeez.)

Some people said, oh, letters are fine, but packages won’t work. Whereas another girl swore she sent packages here every week for a while and they got through fine.

So anyone who has sent me birthday packages… don’t fret if it takes a month or longer for them to get here… I totally appreciate the effort and thought.