Typical

So after over two years of life in Botswana, I managed to get my baggage that I'm traveling through Europe with (gee, was that me who said just seven short years ago that she had learned her lesson about this and would be properly backpacking through Europe when I did it next, only to be bringing a backpack...inside a rolling duffle? no! couldn't be. WILL I NEVER LEARN????) with down to my backpack packed inside my rolling duffle,some clothes to wear along the way, a few gifts and that is it. I think (hope, pray, ect) that the whole shebang is under 20 kgs (or we're going to rely on tears and mastercard to get that bag on the plane. or all 7 of them. eish.) Despite a Herculean effort on my part to get rid of stuff, including burning, burying, selling, giving away and just hiding and leaving stuff in secret piles from myself, I still had two boxes of stuff that I just could not part with and cannot bring with me. It's journals and baskets and kikois that I've acquired or been given that I want, but cannot take on 7 plane rides.

I had packed, repacked, and culled the boxes to the bare minimum and had sealed them. I was dreading the inevitable clusterf*ck of accomplishing anything to do with most anything in Botswana, but consoled myself with the fact that this would all be over soon, and this would be one of the last ridiculous things I would have to manage in Africa, besides getting myself off the continent.

So the other morning, Clara and I made our way to the post office early in order to ship three boxes (she had one to send as well) to the United States of America.

Below are pictures of what we accomplished.

We placed all three boxes on the counter, and told the guy they must all be shipped to the States. Now in the States, from what I can recall, and including all evidence I have based on the leftover postage tag on the box I am now sending back to it's homeland, when one ships something abroad, it is weighed and measured, information is typed into a computer, a total is given, and a neat little pinkish orange (and might I add presticky) white tag comes out with the amount of the postage, that money exchanges hands either through cash,(possibly check) or credit card, and a few forms are completed, attached to the box, and away it goes, arriving at it's destination in a few short weeks. Not so in Botswana. What a lovely and completely unexpected surprise!

Or not so much, as the only surprise was how much more ridiculous it was than even I anticipated.

Here of course there is no credit card machine at the post office, which I expected, so I had preplanned the route I was going to take to the nearest cash machine once I got a total. Predictably the total I was given was wrong, but I accounted for that and took out more than they said while Clara paid her total. This meant that Clara was given her stamps first. Yup that's right Stamps. Like you put on letters. Correction like you LICK and put on letters, except in the rest of the world they are like stickers these days. These boxes that weighed in the neighborhood of several kilos each (three and seven to be exact on my part. What? I had a lot to write in two years and many friends who gave me shit I couldn't part with when I left;-)

And we filled the things with STAMPS. THAT YOU LICK.

so as I said, since Clara had handed over her cash first, in a usual feat of Botswana brilliance despite the fact that I had the heaviest boxes she was given her stamps first. And as the post office is a government office, they never have enough of pretty much anything. Including large denomination stamps. So they give Clara her several hundred pula worth of stamps in the larger denominations. Then they give me my even more expensive total amount of the stamps for my smaller box. There were still quite a few stamps on each of these boxes, but we had used enough stamps that all the bigger denominations (and by this we mean like 4.60P, and 3.00P). So there were still lots of stamps on these boxes (see photos)

It was at this point, when we were already feeling a bit sick from all the glue that we had to ingest to finish off the first two boxes that the guy began handing over the pages of stamps required to send my largest and heaviest box halfway across the world. That's right pages plural.550.40 Pula worth of postage.... in 2.60 stamps. Which are round FIFA world cup stamps that you can cut out of a square outer ring to save space. And would have taken 6 years and the remainder of my patience for all things Botswana and I still had a week left in the country. Needless to say there were a lot. And we just stared at the post office guy.

And he stared back.

So we proceeded to make ourselves sick licking these nasty things (we had about ten stamps left when they brought us an ancient but useful looking roller-wetter thingy). As we are nearly finished, and have gone through a minor battle with this dude about whether we can put them on the bottom of the box, he then produces forms. Which we also have to put somewhere on this box.

At one point I asked what happens if all the stamps were to fall off, or if some of them did, as there were hundreds on the damn box and I was damned if this bloody thing was going to be returned to this bloody country for alleged lack of postage or some such false infraction. As some of the stamps are stuck on top of duct tape, and they are the lick and stick kind, this is a possibility in my American, preplanning, anticipate and prevent problems ahead of time brain.

His answer?

"They can't."

When I realized he had to then make a black stamp on top of each and everyone one of the hundreds of stamps already on the box I had to step outside and breathe through the rest of the process.

Those boxes may indeed arrive in America, but anyone working at the post office there is certain to have one helluva laugh.

THIS IS AFRICA.





My lighter box to be sent to the States



the heavier box



This is covered on all sides including the bottom. we had to fight with him about the form and whether the stamps could slightly cover each other. He seemed to think this was all our problem.



Mine and Clara's lighter boxes