There and Back Again: Peace Corps Uganda: Mailtime!

Almost every Saturday, Kris and I wake up, fry up some eggs and toast, and then make the 45-minute trek to the nearest post office. It’s actually a really nice walk with beautiful views, and it passes by a place I suspect is a vineyard. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet gotten up the courage to follow through on my plan of climbing the mountain it’s on, knocking on the door, asking if they are actually a vineyard, and then gracefully accepting a few free bottles of wine.

After my weekly longing glance at Wine Mountain, we reach the post office and are enthusiastically greeted by the post master who we forever ingratiated ourselves with by speaking to him in hesitant, stumbling Runyankore when we first met him. He ducks into the back of the two-room building and, on the best days, comes out looking like a Ugandan Santa Claus, his arms full of letters and packages and his face beaming. We stuff our loot into Kris’s backpack, pay the delivery fees, and race back home where we allow ourselves to open one letter or package upon arrival. We then try to space out the opening of any other mail we’ve received for the rest of the day. Sometimes we even save a letter for the upcoming week when we know that one or both of us has a potentially rough or stressful day coming up. Mail from home is, without a doubt, one of the best outlets we have here.

Life is a new kind of stressful as Peace Corps Volunteers, and we have to find new ways to deal with it. A lot of outlets come from within – exercise, meditation, yoga, creative cooking, crafting, journaling, decorating. This inner dependence is not initially by choice; with unreliable electricity (I’ve discovered that I have the magical ability to make the house go dark by shaving my legs), limited grocery options, and expensive airtime, a lot of these are our only options for free-time activities. But those limited choices are actually one of the amazing things about being a PCV. You are pushed to reflect, rely upon yourself, and grow in a way that you have never been able to before.

However, there is only so much meditation and friendship-bracelet making you can do before you go insane. Luckily, we have incredible friends and family who have helped us to keep going, day after day, with our new-found appreciation of the lost art of mail. There is just nothing like a long, handwritten letter, the crack of the tape on a package as you tear into it, or the feeling of pulling one over on the postal system by stuffing as many things as possible into an envelope without having to add any more stamps.

This blog is a thank you for that appreciation, that outlet, that sanity. A thank you to not just those mentioned in this blog but to everyone out there who has brightened our day, helped us continue our work, and made us feel like we are still a part of their lives with a letter, a package, a card, a donation, an email, a Facebook message, a comment, or even a 12-year-old scotch. Webare munonga, banwanyi baitu.