Day 231: Post Office Mayhem Revisited

"...ordinary people all over the world, recognizing that no-one would escape the effects of a nuclear war, have rightly asserted that peace is everyone's concern."

- Baha'i International Community, "Creating a Universal Culture of Human Rights"

Mitra and I had to go to the post office today. We ran into two good friends of ours, Mr. Crippling Inefficiency and Ms. Mass Chaos.

Mitra had to send a package to her son who is doing his year of service in the Kigoma area, and we also had to mail 119 invitations for United Nations Day. The woman at the information desk told us to go to either window 11 or 12. When we showed the letters to the woman at window 11, she told us to go outside and around the corner, which I knew from my previous trip to the post office meant she was sending us to the parcel area. Nevertheless, I have learned not to complicate things by asking questions.

At the parcel area, there were two lines. One was much longer than the other, and we were told to get into the long line by one of the postal employees loitering around doing nothing whatsoever. When we were finally called, we were told that they didn't handle parcels going to destinations inside the country and the parcel area didn't handle letters. Basically, we were in the wrong line and we needed to get in the other line. When we got to the end of that line, the woman refused to speak English. Thankfully, Mitra knows enough Swahili to converse in it on a basic level. This woman told us that she wasn't going to send the package because it wasn't wrapped in brown paper despite the fact that the half dozen other packages she had just taken weren't wrapped in brown paper.

Back at the information desk, the woman manning it directed Mitra to where she could find some brown paper and told me to go back to window 11 or 12 to mail the letters. Back at window 11, the woman decided that this time she would take the letters instead of sending me around the corner for no reason. After counting the letters (I guess to make sure I wasn't lying about how many stamps I wanted?), I paid her and she gave me 119 stamps and a dish of water. Mitra returned with her package wrapped in brown paper and offered to help, but I thought it would be better that I start stamping alone while she went and stood in line in the parcel area.

Halfway through the stamping, Mitra returned and helped me finish the rest. After being told "subili" (wait) a few times, the woman had taken her package. Back at window 11 with our stamped letters, the woman handed us our receipt and told us we should drop the letters "outside." Outside, we found a big box marked "DSM Mail Only," and after a few questions we determined that was where they were supposed to go. We hoped. After saying goodbye to Mr. Inefficiency and Ms. Chaos, we got back in our car (which thankfully hadn't been stripped and/or stolen) and headed off to finish our errands.

Speaking of Mr. Inefficiency and Ms. Chaos, it was reported in the paper today that the power situation would be getting worse, even though they've been saying for weeks it was going to improve in mid-October. The two major hydroelectric dams, Mtera and Kidatu, are scheduled to stop working in 15 days because the water in them is so low. They have a combined capacity of producing 280 megawatts of electricity but right now they're only producing 33 megawatts during the day and 48 megawatts at night. In 15 days, they'll be producing 0 megawatts and five regions in the northwest of Tanzania will be completely without power.

Although the majority of my service here has been wonderful and the friends have been especially cooperative, I have run into one consistent problem and that is that many people don't accord me very much respect, if any at all. I can't get around the fact that I'm "just" a year of service volunteer, but I'm also the Secretary of a committee of the National Spiritual Assembly. My work is constantly frustrated by people dismissing my requests and being all around uncooperative because, after all, I'm "just" a year of service volunteer. I know that I'm only here temporarily and that most volunteers don't end up on national committees or function as the secretary of anything, but that's not much of an excuse for the way I'm occassionally treated. The secretaries of the National Institute Board or the National Literature & Publishing Committee aren't made to jump through the same kinds of hoops that I have to, and I know my counterparts in Kenya, India, Ameria or wherever else aren't made to do the same thing, either.

But, as Mitra sometimes reminds me, that's a nag.

News is often a little slow here, but we found out about North Korea's nuclear weapon test shortly after it happened. I was furious, as if I had some personal stake in the whole ordeal. I can't believe that they have gotten away with it so easily when we invaded Iraq (supposedly) on the mere suspicion that they had weapons of mass destruction. Now we're just standing around puffing a lot of hot air when a nation far more dangerous than Iraq actually tests the most destructive of them all! Of course we all know now that we didn't invade Iraq for weapons of mass destruction (although everyone seems to be in denial or too afraid to say anything without being beaten over the head about terrorists, 9/11 and national security) but it's the principle of the thing.

So now the world is going to get together and slap some more sanctions on North Korea. The whole regime of sanctions laid on them before this didn't seem to bother them too much, and they still managed to develop nuclear weapons so I don't know what makes people think these new sanctions are going to affect them anymore. I guess as a Baha'i I shouldn't be advocating the use of force but the blatant hypocrisy of my own government's foreign policy really sets me off sometimes. And what makes countries think it's a good idea to do this anyway? What are you going to do with a nuclear weapon anyway? Use it and thereby guarantee your own complete and absolute destruction? Nevertheless, I'm sure South Korean and Japanese politicians are now behind closed doors discussing the very real possibility of developing their own nuclear "deterrents."