Post Office

[asakiyume]

I had to return a completed job by post this morning. While I was filling out a form, the door opened and there was an amazing sound of CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP emanating from a cardboard box, marked "live chicks" and with sides punctuated with air holes and with hay sticking out from those holes.

"The beats are the heart of the party," the person carrying this box was saying into his bluetooth. He set the box down on the counter and left.

CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP! said those live chicks.

"Ed's called twice already, wondering where his chicks are," said J.

"Well, you can tell him they've arrived," said T.

I asked about chick delivery, and T told me that they have go overnight. Those chicks came from Iowa.

. . . Did you know that East Timor has no government-run, nationwide postal system?

They have internet and wifi. The East Timor Action Network just today reported that Timor Telecom is offering computers to schools and universities in Timor-Leste (East Timor), "to contribute to the digital inclusion of students and create a new approach to teaching." But if I want to get a computer to someone in Timor-Leste--say someone in the town of Ainaro--I either have to bring it myself or give it to someone who's going over, who then has to hand deliver it or entrust it to someone to deliver. If I make friends with anyone in Ainaro while I'm over there, I can send them emails or phone them, but I can't send them a letter, not directly to their home.

My contact tells me that within the town of Ainaro there's mail delivery that's carried out by the district administration, and maybe the same thing happens in other districts, and in the capital of Dili. But if you're in Dili and you want to get something to Ainaro, you have to arrange something with a bus driver or someone else who will play courier.

This is one way (one of many ways) in which Timor-Leste is different from the fictional nation of W-- in my Pen Pal novel. W-- has a postal service.

Comments

[selidor]

Where I grew up, there was a regular delivery of chicks in a Cessna down to the other end of the island, in those carefully-packed cartons. The air traffic controllers said that flight was always adorably distinctive - as soon as the pilot keyed the mike, the overwhelming CHEEP CHEEP would fill the airwaves.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Hee!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

D'awww! Things like that are so wonderful. And they're amazingly loud. It was incredible when the guy came in the door. Like he was carrying an armload of excited kindergarteners.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I wonder if Ohio chicks have a particular accent. Or maybe if chicks that travelled by plane take on a particular type of creeping.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Maybe there are dialect maps for chickens, just like for people. But these are Iowa chicks, not Ohio ones. Same I and O, but different places in the state name. (It all depended on where in the sky Jupiter's volcanically active moon was at the time the state needed a name.)

[stormdog.livejournal.com]

That's fantastic.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It was very cute (the chicks, I mean)

[just-ann-now.livejournal.com]

My daughter gets regular deliveries of live chicks every six weeks. The post office folks call her at 5:30 am to come collect them - they don't want to be responsible for one minute more than necessary.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Hahaha! I think the guy who was expecting these chicks had expected them to arrive earlier. I got to the PO about 10:30.

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

Sounds a bit precarious to me!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

You mean the methods of mail delivery in Timor Leste, or do you mean the transport of chicks?

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

Delvery methods. Crazy!

[j.a. grier (from livejournal.com)]

That's fascinating. We don't often realize how wonderful it is to have reliable postal service. It is amazing to see how people socially just find ways to move stuff from place to place. How we move stuff is a real cultural phenomenon. Fictional Planet (http://www.onewritersmind.blogspot.com/)

[marmota-monax.livejournal.com]

Chick deliveries arrive at the Turners Falls P.O. once in a while, and one driver is assigned to deliver them immediately. John always comes home melancholy from a chick day at the P.O. I won't go into why, here.

I think I've mentioned this before, perhaps on my LJ a couple years ago, but the T.F. postmaster has a unique way of letting a carrier know if he or she will deliver cremated remains on a particular day. He tells them that there is a "passenger" going with them in their truck. And since non-postal riders are never allowed in the LLVs, the carriers instantly know they have a cremation to deliver that day. John never leaves a "passenger" in a mailbox (which he could do); he always delivers the parcel to the door and makes sure it goes into human hands, and offers his condolences.

[agentmaly.livejournal.com]

Someone's cremated remains left in a mailbox as a matter of procedure - that's just such a weird image.

[marmota-monax.livejournal.com]

I would guess that most postal carriers make the point and effort to hand-deliver. The carriers are under such enormous pressure these days to save every possible second while on their routes, I imagine that's why they've been allowed to put such parcels in the post box, but my husband finds other ways to cut time-corners when he's got a passenger so that he can take the time to hand deliver.

[cafenowhere.livejournal.com]

I had no idea that might be a carrier's responsibility! I'm grateful for your husband's special efforts.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Your husband is a compassionate man.

I like the term "passenger." That's lovely.

[stormdog.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize live chicks were shipped through the mail. How interesting!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I didn't either, until today!

[nipernaadiagain.livejournal.com]

I now feel so sorry for people of East Timor.

Of course, with help of the internet it is possible to figure out how to send something, but still, using regular mail would be easier.

Then again, I have some online friends who refuse to send me anything by regular snail-mail also, as they consider it tricky, too much work.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I feel sorry too!

And this comment of yours is making me want to send you a letter or postcard. When I come home, I'll ask for your address and send you something.

(And are you home now, or still in the states?)

[nipernaadiagain.livejournal.com]

In Estonia now.

And I always welcome snail mail :D

[wuweibaby.livejournal.com]

That's kind of awesome in an unhandy way :)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It's certainly *interesting*. As I think about it, I think it says a lot about how the colonialists of past decades and centuries and, of course, the people themselves, viewed themselves as distinct kingdoms. Also, in the past, not a whole lot of business or culture got transmitted in written form, so having a system to exchange written messages probably wasn't a high priority. And now we have the Internet, so it's still not a high priority, I'm guessing. All just guessing, though. I'll see what I see when I get there. I wish I had a brain X 2, and eyes and ears X 4, so I could take in MORE.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

We're so used, in the US, to a lot of public infrastructure that facilitates our functioning as one nation, as a community, as communities, that we often think postal delivery and public san grow by themselves, from some sort of beneficent mycelium.

beneficent mycelium

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

OMG that is about the best phrase, and now I'm thinking, what's better: an op-ed piece using that, or a short story using it. Whichever, amaebi, it's genius, and you should use it more widely than in the comment to one journal entry!

Plus, I totally agree with you.

Plus, I was thinking about how hard it is to argue for a postal system--something I strongly believe in as a civic responsibility--when any observer can look at how we're treating our own (and also at the fact that it's not without cost to run). Especially, though, when you're trying to assert that a place is one country, and to get a sense of national unity over disparate communities speaking different languages, I'd think it would be a key thing. But perhaps on the ground in Timor-Leste people feel that they're drawn together more through Internet communications. And, too, to have a postal system requires development and upkeep of the infrastructure for delivering the mail, which is also an issue there. I'm about to find out why it is that a journey of 70 miles takes 6 hours, for instance...

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you like it!

And oh, I was so not dissing public policy in East Timor. I'm entirely unqualified to do so, being arbitrarily close to entirely ignorant. I was dissing US discourse about public policy! :D

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I absolutely didn't think you were dissing public policy in East Timor! No worries, I read it completely as you intended it! And I, too, wasn't so much trying to diss the decision or the priorities as I was trying to work through the various factors that go into it.

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of the drivers in Madagascar, acting courier. Stopping in the middle of nowhere, delivering stuff. :P

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

And your time in Madagascar has been on my mind today and yesterday because of my correspondence with a guy who's done work in East Timor and Brazil, a story he told me about Brazil... more by email.

[88greenthumb.livejournal.com]

I come from a Third World country too, but more like W- perhaps. There is a nationwide government postal system, albeit not as efficient as those in the west...But that informal courier system that you describe still exists-not only locally, but also, (interestingly) internationally.

Do you know if one can send letters and such from Timor Leste to the outside world, though?

On another note, it's now August 1, so another day and you'll be off to Timor Leste! Very excited for you! Have a wonderful trip, F.! (((huggsss))))

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I *don't* know if one can send letters from TL out--I would like it to be so, because then people in Timor-Leste could have paper pen pals, but I think maybe not? But I'll find out when I get there.

I do know that the Philippines has a postal system, both from the wonderful story of your mother and also from the story of Gabriela Silang, that you shared with me--her husband was a postal worker (or, now that I look at Wikipedia again, perhaps a courier...)

Just doing last-minute things today before leaving tomorrow! I think the teachers' house I'll be staying in in Ainaro does have internet (!) so I may be able to make some posts.

[slobbit.livejournal.com]

When we lived in OK we had bantams we raised from chicks. They arrived in such a box, peeping away and also driving that post office nuts. It was amazing to receive those somewhat anonymous little beings -- fuzzballs of various colors -- and see them turn into specific, entirely different things. (Our order was for mixed bantams, including arucanas, and we ended up with Cochins in several colors and a pretty little arucana hen that laid delicately blue eggs.)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I love those blue eggs! And yeah, I guess it's like human babies--sweet, but fairly indistinguishable--and yet growing up into some very different-looking adults.

I never knew you lived in Oklahoma for a while! That's cool. I have another friend, whom I met on LJ but became IRL friends with, who grew up there, lived for a while (when I was first knowing her) in Arizona, but is now *very* happy settled in New England.