Amid all the house purging and burning and donating, I also packed a big box of stuff I wanted to ship home. On a Friday morning, I struggled the hardest I’ve ever struggled to carry anything: a 50ish pound, bulky cardboard box, carrying it in my arms and propped up against my hip or hoisting it up on top of my head. By the time I get down the hill to the taxi stop (having to run part of the way in order not to miss the taxi), my arms literally just give out because it was so heavy. One ntate sees me absolutely struggling and came to help me carry it the last bit to the taxi. So I take this box, holding on to it as it is precariously balanced on my lap and against the front seats, to Mount Moorosi, hauling it out of the taxi, then having to squat a little to fit through the post office door as it wobbles on my head, and I ask about shipping. Turns out they don’t have a scale, says the post office lady. “What about this one right here?” I ask, gesturing to the scale on the counter next to me. “That one has a problem.” Ohhkay then. The lady offers to send it to Quthing for me. Nope, I reply. I’ll just take it myself. So I heave it up on my head and walk to the Quthing-bound taxi in the rank. I get out at the top of town where the post office is and carry the box inside. And guess what? It’s maxing out the postal scale, so they can’t ship it as-is, and they suggest that I divide it into two smaller boxes. Ok then. So I go across the street to the Chinese wholesale shop and dig two decently unripped and unsmashed boxes out of the trash pile, then I’m back in the post office taking things out of the enormous box and organizing them into the two smaller boxes, all the while taping and reinforcing with some obnoxious red duct tape. Meanwhile, as I’m taking everything out and putting things on the bench and on the floor, one of the bo’me working at the post office is calling to me to give her my socks, give her this, give her that. I forgot that if you show some Basotho that you have anything, they’ll ask for it. Most of the time, this is seen as a complement and not taken literally as asking for your things, but it’s still annoying nonetheless.
So I get this stuff separated into two relatively equal-weighted boxes that will fit on to the scale. Cool. The problem now is that they only accept cash, and I severely underestimated what this would cost me. In my sleep-deprived, packing-whirlwind state, I didn’t think to grab enough cash from home. No problem, I thought. I’ll just run across the street to the bank/ATM and get some cash. The ATM is a no-go and my card doesn’t work. At this point, I text my mom to make sure that my card was still unblocked, but it’s not even 6am in the US, so she’ll have to wait, call customer service, then call me back. Meanwhile, I ask the post office lady to just hold on to my boxes while I find cash in Lower Moyeni (Lower Quthing), the part of town at the bottom of the hill. I take a 4+1 taxi down to the bottom to a different ATM, whose screen looks like the Windows boot up screen and is obviously not going to start working anytime soon. Then I go to the other ATM near it. “This ATM is closed,” reads the screen, with no further explanation. What the heck? Then I try a third bank’s ATM up the street, but the security guard tells me to wait because they’re putting money in it, and to come back in ten minutes. Thirty minutes later, after I successfully buy something online, confirming that the card does in fact work, I go back to the ATM, which I then learned only accepts local cards and not international banks’ cards.
Mom comes through for me and informs me that my bank has confirmed that the card is unblocked and should be good to go. Sweet. I take a taxi back to Upper Moyeni (Upper Quthing) where the post office and first bank are and try that ATM once again, which by this point has quite a long line since it’s the only ATM in town currently functioning. Still doesn’t work. This whole time, I’m thinking of different scenarios in my head: if the ATM doesn’t work, I’ll do x, if I can get cash some other way, I’ll do y, if I have to leave my boxes at the post office and come back later, I’ll do z. I ended up leaving my boxes in the Quthing district VRC (volunteer resource center) with the plan to ship them when I come back through after going on my mini vacation to the north of Lesotho. I explained this to the post office lady who told me that I shouldn’t bother coming back tomorrow to ship the boxes because she wouldn’t be there, as she had to leave town to go do something (typical), also don’t come on Tuesday because it’s Lesotho’s independence day. I assured her that I’d be back the following week.
Luckily, some guy in the post office overheard that my next destination for the day would be Mohale’s Hoek, so he asked me to wait for him while he finished doing whatever at the post office and he would take me there. Score! So I waited- what’s a little more waiting after I’ve been waiting all day for things to happen? Soon enough, I was throwing my backpack and two boxes in the back of his pickup, then his daughter helped me bring the boxes into the VRC as he stopped there for me. Then we were driving up to Mohale’s Hoek. This guy was belting out the bass part of a Sesotho gospel song playing on the stereo while the daughter just laughed in the passenger’s seat. The music was loud and annoying (and strangely enough, he turned it up, not down, while taking a phone call), but I didn’t care because he just seemed so happy singing along, and his daughter was definitely being entertained by him as well. He dropped me off in Mohale’s Hoek and I immediately checked if the ATM there was working. Success! I guess it was just the one ATM in Quthing that wasn’t taking my card. I wouldn’t be moneyless after all!
So the point is, what is normally a VERY simple and straightforward process in the US, shipping a box, ended up taking a whole day, and I didn’t even accomplish the actual shipping of the box. I’m so looking forward to going back to a world where every public service doesn’t malfunction all at once, and whenever you need to do anything you’re not hoping and wondering if you’ll actually get that task accomplished in any reasonable amount of time, if at all.
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