It Makes the World Go Round, Part 3

So I forget if I ever wrote about this, but a few weeks ago I went to go pick up a package. See, small mail gets delivered to WARC (or at least to the local post office, where someone picks it up) but bigger packages just send a notice for you to head to the post office downtown to pick it up yourself.

So if you're me, depending on when this week someone's gone to the post office, suddenly you're handed a note saying "take this piece of paper to the post office downtown", and you realize that you might have gotten that paper three days ago when A) it arrived, just no one had picked it up yet or B) you had a break between classes, but now you have to wait till tomorrow.

And tomorrow after class at one you flag down a taxi and make sure they know where the "colis poste" is and tell them you won't pay them unless they take you exactly there since most will pretend they know where you're going and then ask directions halfway there. And it's 1500 CFA, no way are you getting a taxi for less. And you arrive at 1:10 and they're on lunch break. So you sit there for a few hours maybe until they're off break. Then you walk up to window/guichet A and hand them your note, and they ask for your ID, which you show, and they give you a form and say go through door 1, turn right, and you realize when you're there that they meant left because there's nowhere right to go, and you do and another man sends you through door number 2 and aroudn the corner to a room where a bunch of people are clustered around a computer playing trivia online, and one of them waves you over to a man asleep at his desk. You try to nicely wake him up, he waves you over to the man standing right behind you this whole time who goes through door number 3 to where all the packages are. (which by the way is just a doorway away from the back of guichet A and B, you can see straight through to where you just were, it was a roundabout way of getting to the back room, where the man at the window could have slid with his swivel chair (assuming the swivel works) with the forms himself and saved everyone else the instructions and stamps and running about. But we forget this is Senegal.) And then they take your form and note and add a stamp to each, and cut open your package to make sure there's nothing weird inside, and then tape it back and send you, sans package, back through door 3 to room 2 where a man gives you another form and stamps it and sends you back to the first room and the first window A.

The man at window A asks for your ID again and all three forms and the one note and stamps them all or signs them and sends you two feet over to window B. There is no one at window B. So the man from guichet A goes over to guichet B and takes your 1300 CFA (it's an extra 300 since you picked it up 3 days late since whoever went and picked up the note from the local, not downtown, post office decided to go on wednesday and not monday) and then sens you over to guichet A where he takes the two stamped reciepts he gave you from guichet B, and hands you your package. And then you flag down another taxi and pay 1500 CFA to get back to school.

Hassle set aside, I do love getting packages. Which is why today, I was excited that Awa handed me a pink slip, indicating that I have one waiting! Very exciting.

But she said that it's Friday and post offices close at three. And I'm leaving on Saturday for spring break and not getting back until Friday night and then we're leaving on Monday morning at 7 for our internships for six weeks so I really won't have any other time but TODAY to get my package. And I have a wolof test at 11. So I take the Wolof test as soon as I can (we each go in for a 10 minute interview) and then I go to the local post office to exchange my pink slip for my blue note which is the one I have to take downtown to the colis postale. And then I hurry with Elissa/Elysa/Alissa (who also needs to pick up a package) over to order burgers for us and Dylan who meets us there after his interview since he's got a package too. As soon as we're done eating Kelsey's arrived, having just finished her interview, and the four of us share a cab downtown, arriving maybe at 1:30 which is awesome. We rush into the post office only to hear that they're closed for lunch. Turns out they open again at 3, until 4:30. Awa was wrong, or we misunderstood. Either is possible. Dylan heads back to WARC to get some work done.

A/E/lyssa and Kelsey and I try to take a walk around but there isn't much to see in this part of town so we end up at a tiny boutique sitting outside eating snacks and charming the locals with our hilariously small grasp of Wolof. After half an hour we head back and just sit for an hour in the shade inside the post office and chat and nearly fall asleep. As soon as the guichets open I lead the three of us over to window A since I've done this before I let the other two go first. They disappear behind door 1, and I hand the man at window A my blue note, ready to make the whole trip again. Instead, he explains to me that this note just signifies the tracking number for the package I already got, it's the delayed paperwork in other words.





oh.






So I sit down and wait for the other two to make their way through windows and doors and forms and stamps and reciepts and identification. And then Kelsey goes on to another post office where she can pick up her other package, and A/E/lyssa and I share a taxi back, where she opens up the sickeningly sweet and annoyingly adorable birthday care package from the sap that in my head I am calling Some Guy Named Joe. But she shares some chocolate with me so I have to refrain from being angry. Besides, she's happy, and I can't really be all grumpy when she's so honestly ecstatic. Even though my head is pounding.


Besides, I'm going dancing tonight. Last chance before I leave. I've got ibuprofen at home. It's all good.