Mailbag Mayhem

To my great surprise, my third and final Christmas package arrived in the office yesterday. While it didn’t find its way into my hands until a month and a half after Christmas and had clearly been sliced open and resealed with staples and wax, I couldn’t have been more relieved or delighted than I was when I handed over the 70 taka “delivery charge” and signed the release waiver.

Estimating how long a particular package will take to travel from its origin (Vancouver) to its destination in Bangladesh’s capital city should not be as difficult as that oft reappearing high school math question that asks students to calculate when Train A and Train B will arrive at the same destination if they are traveling at different speeds from different stations. Unfortunately, that appears to be the case.

Unlike the train problem, however, which appears difficult on the surface but is simplified when all the unnecessary info that had been planted into the question to confuse you is thrown away, the Bangladeshi postal service – with its manual scales and absence of computers - is frustratingly simple on the outside, but excruciatingly complex on the inside.

My package, one of those medium-sized, rectangular and padded envelopes sold by Canada Post, is adorned with five different scribbles in no less than four different styles of handwriting. What they indicate is that my package actually arrived in the country on December 2^nd (it was sent at the same time as another package from the same point of origin that arrived a week before Christmas even though it was much larger and packed with homemade Christmas cookies) but was “detained” by customs officials at the Zia International Airport here in Dhaka.

One scribble identifies the package’s weight even though it was already indicated by Canada Post’s electronic sticker; two others tell me when the package was detained (“C-shift” on December 2^nd, 2004); yet another indicates the flight on which it arrived (DA68); and the last one is written in my mom’s handwriting on a green and black Canada Customs label in the bottom left-hand corner of the soft white envelope. Crucially, this last piece of information indicates the package’s contents and their estimated value.

It’s still unclear why my package was detained for two months, but I have a gut feeling that the $50 estimated value of the “fabric wall hanging, pot holder and candy” had something to do with it. Even though the handmade gifts from my family were worth far more to me than fifty Canadian dollars, they would have been almost worthless to any local customs official seeking to supplement his undoubtedly meager income. Unless my family splurged for the finest chocolate in the land, I doubt that the candy - which never made it to me - was worth such a princely amount either, but it was obviously worthy of the taste buds of the individual who extracted it from my package and kept it for himself.

Then again, perhaps it was the word ‘pot’ on a package from British Columbia that set off alarm bells…

Regardless of the motivation behind its unlawful detainment, when the delivery man finally arrived with this package – which we had all written off as lost forever - he even had the audacity to demand baksheesh, despite the fact that the package had clearly already been opened and carelessly resealed. “Let me get this straight”, I thought: “my package arrived in this country three weeks before Christmas but it wasn’t delivered to me until over a month after the holiday had passed; you took my candy (likely Norwegian marzipan) and rummaged through my personal affairs; and now you’re asking for a tip??” Fortunately, however, the joy of receiving the package after two months of speculation and anticipation far outweighed the resentment and anger I was also feeling at that moment.

A day later, the intersection of euphoria and anger has yielded to simple resignation. I’ve understood for a long time now that notions of private property and personal space do not resemble those that we assume to be universal back home. I realize that I shouldn’t expect the postal service in the most corrupt country in the world for five consecutive years, according to Transparency International, to be neither flawless nor efficient, and I can even imagine that the person who took my candy likely enjoyed it more than I might have (assuming the guilt he or she must have felt didn’t overwhelm the sweetness of the chocolate).

What I don’t understand, though, is how the package – which contained a beautiful Christmas hanging quilted by my mother, a dishcloth knitted by my sister, and a hand-woven Norwegian flag pot holder from my father - even made it to me at all.