Post Office

Here's my Day 13 journal entry. Teri is busy doing school work--amazing news, heh?


Thursday 21 Aug 2008

I venture out to the Oficina de Correo (Postal Service) of Peru, Serpost, on the Plaza de Armas, next to the Oficina de Tourismo to see if I can manage to mail our request for absentee ballots to the Wasco County Clerk. We hope our vote will be counted in the coming November election.

I practice what I need to say as I walk quickly from Miraflores (the name of our neighborhood) to Plaza de Armas. Our guide book says that’s where I will find it and, sure enough, as I walk through the beautiful garden in the center of the plaza I spot the Serpost name on the side of a building that is where the guide book says it’ll be and my pulse quickens—a momentary flush of success.

I walk through the door and notice there are people sitting in two of the ten permanently attached chairs in the middle of the floor so I wonder if I’m supposed to take a number. Nah—they are not waiting, I discover by further acute observation, they are just sitting in the cool office having a private afternoon conversation; they are not waiting, I can tell, because they only have eyes for each other, they are holding hands, and because they are ignoring the clerks completely.

Since I’m on a roll I throw the dice and chose one of the three Serpost windows. (One of the windows is empty and two windows have clerks waiting behind the barred counters in their trim navy blue uniforms—in fact, one window has two clerks waiting, which might have influenced my choice.) The one sitting at the counter looks up at me and I show her my mail; she smiles, shakes her head, and nods to the adjacent window. Ah well, win some lose some.

The single clerk, a middle-aged woman, nods (curtly, I think), but all goes smoothly until she asks me a couple of quick questions that stump me so I respond in what I think is a friendly, building-a-better-world-one-by-one, voice, “lo siento, no entiendo (I’m sorry, I don’t understand).” I think she shrugs her shoulders, so I add, “hablo un poco espanol,” and she flashes me a smile so tight I think her lips are going to implode. She says, “ah, Estados Unidos,” as she fondles my cards; and I say “par avion” and I think she might smack me—if she can get her chubby arms through the bars to do it.

She consults a manual of some kind, picks up a rubber stamp, smartly strikes one card and then the other, peels a stamp out of a book, moistens it, sticks it on one card, then peels and sticks one on the other. I start to ask how much and find she isn’t finished yet; she punches some numbers into a small machine, pulls a handle on the side of the machine, and out pops my receipt which she tears off the roll with a flourish, and says something that might be “dough-see-dough-says,” or she might have suddenly decided to do some square dance calling because I sure didn’t know what the hell she said.

Not wanting to ask and trying to save face, I peek at the receipt as she separates the pink one from the white one, but the numbers are too small to read. Damn! I lean close to the bars separating us and try to read the digital numbers on her little machine, but I can’t see those either. She looks at me expectantly and I think she probably hears my brain whirring; then we both say at the same time, “doce soles (twelve soles)”. Yes! I inwardly shout as I take my receipt after handing her the money. Then she hands the stamped and rubber-stamped cards back to me. Oh, oh, I think, what now? How do I say, where do I put these, or what am I supposed to do with these, or . . .

She notices my distress and nods to her right and says, “Alla!” and I remember from my Spanish conversation class that she had just said ‘there’ or ‘over there’ so I look to my left and all I see are more counters, but I mosey that way. I look for a slot or something in the next empty cubicle but I don’t see anything.

“Alla!” I hear from the woman’s disembodied voice, so I move more to my left, to the next empty cubicle. “Alla!” the woman’s voice says again, more forcefully this time. By that time I’m at the end of the counter so I go around the counter and there is the clerk peeking from behind the cubicle separators and pointing to my left at the three slots on the outside wall.

I slip my cards through the slot labeled ‘internacional’ and look at the clerk for affirmation—I swear, she is smiling warmly, her deep brown eyes twinkling.