The Saga of the Missing Mail
I’d been warned, ‘It’s one giant abyss’. Sending via courier service is hard to justify, so I had to take my chances, the mail it would be.
It all started a while ago, strange events finding me at a remote gas station late at night with a flat tire. I should have paid attention, observed the signs, nothing good was going to happen this particular evening yet, when I noticed an ATM nearby, I decided it would be a good time for me to top up on some cash.
Well, wouldn’t you know, the machine ate my card. I canceled it, and had a new one issued which was sent to my address of record back in the US. Since I was now in South Africa this was of little use.
The new card, successfully completing part one of its journey, arrived only to be repacked and sent off on its risky cross-country adventure. Tracking number in hand I saw that, after a few weeks, it had made landfall in Johannesburg at the beginning of March. That was encouraging. Then, tracking seemed to stall.
I’m staying in a small town in the Cape region, and the Post Office is a window in the municipal building. Since there was no sign of the card I ventured into said Post Office in the hope they could shed some light. The room was dark. ‘She’s ill, back next Wednesday,’ I was advised by one of the others who’d come over to take a look around. ‘We haven’t received anything for weeks,’ she added. I also discovered they do not deliver mail, I’d had the envelope addressed to the residence I was at, either way if anything arrived it would have to have landed here.
Another week, I’m back, a light on. ‘Have you seen any mail with my name,’ I enquire? I’m reminded they haven’t received anything in a while however, ‘There is someone with the same last name as you, I might have put it in their box’. Always been a fan of the proactive.
That other person — a cousin, I ask would he please check for me, ‘I haven’t looked in there for ages, not sure where the key is’.
It’s been months. While there remains a glimmer, my hopes, faith in the system, teeter on the edge.
