Ruminations on the Kenyan Postal System

I had a three missions today.
1. get the Orange modem for my computer to work.
2. find the package my mother sent me in November.
3. pick up a commode from a shop on Ngong and take it to Joseph, the Maasai boy whose legs were amputated, who lives in Kibiko (translation the middle of nowhere in the bush).

Waited for a matatu going down a particular street in Nairobi and then got on one that took the scenic route through Kibera and then Hurlingham (for anyone who knows where the 111 matatus are supposed to go, this is no small detour.)

It turned out okay because I found the Orange office I was looking for fairly easily. Within 20 minutes, Walter, the techie at Orange, had gotten me straightened out. Now mind you when I tried my modem later in the day it still gave me some issues but I eventually got online. One mission accomplished.

Then I put my excellent directional skills to work and made my way to City Square where there is a massive POSTA location. POSTA is the Kenyan equivalent to USPS. I use the term, equivalent, loosely here. If you'd like to step back in time a few centuries without getting in a time machine all you have to do is enter the City Square POSTA. Stacks and stacks of paper, filed by... hmmmm... date, tracking number, color of senders hair...

I am now coveting the spy pen/camera that I saw a few weeks before I left the US. I'm seriously thinking getting one. An expose on the Kenya postal system would make a killer documentary!

Now before I go any further, let me confess that my package(s) got lost because they did not have a P.O. Box in the address. Never mind that it was supposed to be delivered to an office building. Everything mailed to Kenya must have a P.O. Box. So there was no sloppy postal work involved here.

But rescuing said box from the clutches of the POSTA was tantamount to trying to pay taxes in three states in the same year (yes, I've done that too).

The first interesting thing about the City Square POSTA is the bridge that you cross to get to it. It's a bit sci-fi, like it could be used in a Mad Max movie. On the other side of the bridge is a maze of post office boxes. Millions of them. Then you go down the other side and enter the building and take a lift to the second floor. On the second floor you go down a flight of stairs and enter a massive room (the size of a football field) with a long counter and offices in cages along the walls and in the center. Most are filled with packages.
I went to the counter and told them I was looking for a lost box. They asked if I had the tracking number. I said yes. (Mom had scanned her receipt and emailed it to me.) My instructions were to go around the end of the counter and down the hall to the records office. Kenyans aren't big on labeling things... so I had to hunt a bit, but I was eventually told to go up the stairs, first door on my right. I went in and handed my receipt to the lady who told me to wait. Ten minutes later she me back my receipt with a internal tracking number on and told me to take it to the supervisor down there... the first person I asked happened to be the supervisor. Lucky me! She gave me a small yellow piece of paper that they track packages internally with and told me to take it to the window marked "AM" (airmail) to pick up my package. By this point I'm thinking, wow this was easy. The lady at the window finds my package and tells me to take it to customs. The proceed to open it to verify the contents. And then charge me customs duty, insurance and tax. They have a nice formula. First they charge you the highest exchange rate 81 (the highest I've gotten in Kenya is 80), then the add 1.5 for insurance, then a 25% customs charge of the total value of your package plus insurance, then they charge VAT tax of 16% on that total. My total for a package valued at $75, was an additional $34. Ahhh, but there's more. You can't pay the customs fee at the POSTA, you have to pay it at the bank. But you have to go to the POSTA cashier so they can print the form that you take to the bank to pay with. The cashier types in the info and then you go back up the stairs to the next office where someone else prints out the form. To get to the bank you take the lift down and cross the bridge and walk 4 blocks down the street and queue at window 13. From there you go back to the POSTA with your receipt from the bank, you go back to the long counter where they tell you to go to the cashier who gives you a duplicate of the yellow piece of paper you were given way back when. Then you take that back to the counter, where you are then given a postal receipt, because you are charged for the time the POSTA has kept your package for you. When I got a bit hysterical about having to pay an additional $20 holding fee. I was sent to the postmasters office. A nice lady explained to me the necessity of P.O. Box numbers in the Kenyan postal system. To which I replied that I now realized that fact, but that I had no idea the package was there and that someone from the company where the package was sent had come to look for it but had been told it was lost. (Okay, so I don't think that person actually looked very hard or maybe was not nearly as tenacious as I am.) Anyway, we agreed that $5 dollars would suffice and I went back to the man with the receipt book and was given a receipt that needed to be taken to the cashier to pay. I paid and was sent to pick my box! Finally, my box is safely with it rightful owner. Two hours and countless postal-paper-pushers later, box and recipient are able to leave the POSTA. NOT! A man with a ledger motions for me to step over to his section of the counter. "We have to register all the packages that are claimed," he says. Seriously!

Okay, so a lot of people have jobs because of this antiquated, utterly un-efficient system...but seriously, two hours to pick up a box! The rant is almost over... one word of advice for POSTA ... computers... maybe you didn't hear me... COMPUTERS!!!

Mission two accomplished... and no one died, or was severely injured in the process. Nice!

Mission three should have been easy. Meet David at the bank (same bank)and go to Ngong Road (on the way home) to pick up a commode. Oh, when I went to the bank to pay customs, I met Anika from GUW to pick the money for the commode and directions as to where it was. (multi-tasking in the midst of my postal misery).

David showed up quickly and we headed to pick up some parts for his girlfriend Jackie's car (which he was driving), then we headed to Ngong road where he had new tires but on Jackie's car. That took about an hour and a half. We had lunch with our friend Paul, who had brought David's van... too complicated to explain. David and I start out again on Ngong road and eventually found HighTech Furniture and gave the carpenter the balance for the commode and put it in the back seat of the car and headed for Ngong.

We make it home, Grace is at the city house and is holding court with her niece, Rachael, her daughter-in-law, Gladys and her cousin's daughter-in-law, Hannah. Issues I won't go into were discussed. Then David, Gladys and Rachael left. And Hannah and Grace and I loaded a sewing machine into the back of a taxi and headed into town. I checked Grace's mail while she and Hannah went to buy some fabric.

Hannah is going to make aprons that I will bring back to the states to try to sell. We won't be shipping them!

Mission number 3 is only partially accomplished as it is now 6:45 p.m. and I'm at the cyber. Joseph's commode will have to be delivered to Kibiko tomorrow. It's pretty big, but I will see about attaching it to the back of the piki piki. There's no mission impossible here.