Musings from a Bench in the Port Vila Post Office

All the post cards I bought during my long wait.  

Yesterday, I was working in the Peace Corps Office resource room when a friend asked if I could help her run an errand.  Another Peace Corps volunteer who is serving on Ambae had a package at the post office, and it couldn't be delivered to her on her island until the customs fees were paid.  I didn't know much about how to do this, but I was free- and so I walked to the post office downtown, stopping into stores to browse as I did.

When I got to the post office, I went to the desk labeled "customs" and explained the situation - but they were confused about why I had come and not the volunteer in question, and why I didn't have an invoice for the amount I was supposed to pay.  They suggested that I try another desk, labeled "items to collect" or something like that.  Before I headed over there, I got into a conversation with a couple of men sitting on bench.  In Vanuatu "storying", or chatting, is a big part of daily life - so I told them everything about my situation, the volunteer's name, the island where she was serving, the fact that I got this mission third-hand so wasn't exactly sure what I needed to do, etc.  Well, it turned out that the men worked for the post office, and one of them remembered seeing the packages in question.  Small countries are wonderful this way - would that happen at the national post office in Washington DC?  Anyway, the two men offered to go and get me the invoice form I needed in order to pay for her customs fee.

Off they went, and I sat on the bench and waited.  I didn't have a book or any games on my non-smart phone, so I sat there with my thoughts.  A familiar situation from other Peace Corps and travel experiences, the type of waiting that is surrendering to the slow, uncertain pace of life - just accepting how things are.  I thought about memories I have of other post offices around the world, trying to visit each one in my mind, remembering everything about it.  I thought about how exciting checking our family's post office box at Paul Smith's College was when I was a child - box 265.  I can still remember the combination.  And the box I rented at the post office in Kalale, Benin.  I'd swing by when heading back from Kalale to my village, Peonga, which was a 30 minute motorcycle ride away.  The post office boxes were outside, near the market - I'd ask the motorcycle drive to wait while I hopped off and ran over with my key.  More often than not, the only thing in the box was a thick layer of fine red dust, the dust from the road that had found its way through the cracks.  But sometimes, a letter from home - always covered in red dust itself.  And then the post office in downtown Sitka, Alaska  - where I also rented a box.  I remember sending an Alaska-themed care package from there to my friend Camille, who was still serving in Peace Corps Benin; smoked salmon, pine-scented soap, a t-shirt, fish flavored cat treats for Furlock, her kitten. I spent a long time in the post office trying to figure out what items to remove to make the package a more affordable weight.

The woman sitting next to me on the bench in the Port Vila post office was playing with her keys in her hand, making a rhythmic jingling noise.  "They're all coming back from the RFU", she said to me, starting a conversation.   She was talking about the long line of people collecting money from the Western Union counter in the main lobby.  I asked what RFU meant, and she said it was the people who go from Vanuatu to pick fruit, apples or grapes, in New Zealand for a season.  They had gotten back the day before, and were collecting their money.  I asked her what island she was from, an easy conversation topic in Vanuatu; she was from Makira, a very small island part of the Shepherds group north of Efate.  We talked about how a Peace Corps volunteer is serving there right now.  Then after a while she got up and used her key to enter one of the back rooms, and I kept sitting alone.

And I waited.  I thought about how glad I was to have so many memories to keep me entertained.  Really, I thought, the phrase "I've lived a long and rich life" could be applied to me.  Why only use this phrase when at the end of one's life?  It's good to take pauses at any point to appreciate life's richness so far.  So I thought about more memories, and kept waiting, and watching other customers...and slowly the waiting started to get old.  That's the thing about the calm, patient waiting state of mind we take on as Peace Corps volunteers - it runs out.  We're patient, and it's fine...until all the sudden it isn't, and the fact that we've spent more than an hour sitting on the side of the road waiting for a bush taxi, or on our porch waiting for our counterpart, or on a bench waiting in the post office, whatever it may be, starts to feel unbearably frustrating.

I could tell I was transitioning from blissfully grateful for this opportunity to reflect on my life to unbearably frustrated at how long I'd been sitting on that bench, so I got up to buy some post cards.  I ran into the woman from the bench again - it turned out she was the janitor.  "The men haven't come back yet?" she asked, and then told me she'd give them a call.  I chose my post cards, and then waited again in a different place - a long line at the cash register - when finally, I saw one of the men come back in the front door.  He gave me the invoice - an official-looking form with photocopies of the packing slips - and I was finally able to pay the customs fee and be on my way.

Thinking about it, I'm pretty sure those two men had gone all the way to the package sorting center, in a completely different part of town, to get the form I needed for me.  Certainly not part of their job.  Nor was it the janitor's job to call them and find out what was taking so long.  The whole experience was an example of how things get done, here in Vanuatu, and also in many of the other countries I've spent significant time in, like Nepal and Benin.  Systems are in place, or at least the appearance of them - offices, desks, lines, forms.  But the way things really work is by chatting, making friends, telling the other people sharing your bench your story.  And then they choose to go out of their way to make whatever needs to happen, happen.  Would it have been nice if I'd dashed into the post office, paid the fee, and then been on my way?  Sure - but then I wouldn't have developed connections to other people, and have that warm feeling in my heart that comes from being helped by strangers.  So all in all I'm grateful for the experience.

And glad it's over.

Surely it was a one-time experience -

The post office had better not always take that long...