Postcards from Dakar: Packages

When us WARC kids get sent packages, one of two things will happen. Either the package will be deemed worthy to be sent to Poste de Fann, the post office down the street from WARC, or it will need to stay at Colis Postaux, central post office for packages in Dakar. I have no idea what factor it is that determines where the packages go. At first I thought it was size, and that the small packages would go to Fann and the big ones would stay downtown, but now I’ve had big packages come to Fann and small ones go to Colis Postaux, so I have no idea.

Wait, brainwave. It depends on what kind of customs form you put on the package. If it’s the little green one, it goes to Fann. If it’s the big white one, it goes to Colis Postaux. Perhaps the world is a logical place after all.

If the package is at Fann, you get a yellow slip at WARC and just have to take a lovely stroll down the street in order to get your goodies from home. Poste de Fann can be a little nuts if you’re trying to do something like buy stamps, in which case you have to choose a window to wait at, determine if there is a line (which you think wouldn’t be that much of a challenge, but which oddly often is), and then stand in it assertively so that people don’t step ahead of you (usually this means keeping little to no space between you and the person in front of you. No one’s really big on “personal space” in Senegal). When you’re next, you then have the challenge of communicating with the person on the other side of the window. You know in some places with windows, like banks and movie theaters, there will be glass separating you and the teller, and a little device thingy in the glass at around mouth level that makes it so the teller can hear you and you can hear the teller? Yeah, that’s probably what they were going for at Poste de Fann, but they’re missing the little device things. There’s a small cluster of holes in the glass at about mouth level, but they’re not enough to facilitate communication. The teller is seated so that their mouth is closer to the hole where the letters and stamps and money are passed back and forth, so more often than not, you find yourself bending over to talk through there. It’s a good system.

If, however, you’re picking up a package, you get to go to the lovely window number eight, where for some reason, order prevails. The line is easy to find and place yourself in, and the window is a sliding glass door, so there’s a wide open space to talk through. You present your package slip, hand over a tax of 1000 francs, and receive your box of delights.

If you’re picking up your package from Colis Postaux, it’s a whole different story, beginning with the fact that your slip is white instead of yellow (I know, it’s insane). CP is a bus/taxi/car rapide ride away from WARC, in another neighborhood called Medina. Once at CP, retrieving your package is an exercise in Senegalese bureaucracy. You go to the package window and present your slip. The guy then picks through a pile of customs forms and finds the one that goes with your package. You leave the slip with the guy and take the customs form into the next room to the customs guy. The customs guy looks at the form, stamps it, and then sends you into the next room to the next guy, who stamps it and then sends you in to the next room, where another guy retrieves your package and puts it on a table. He, or you, then goes back and gets the last guy, who holds your customs form while the present guy slices the box open and rifles through all your stuff to make sure that there’s nothing dangerous or expensive in there. The guy with your customs form then tells you to stay there and wait for the other guy to tape your box up again. When he’s done doing that, you go back to one of the other rooms, leaving your package on that table in the last room, and get your customs form back. Then you go all the way back out to the main room and present your customs form back to the guy who gave it to you in the first place. He looks at it, gives it back to you, and then sends you to the window to your left to pay the taxes on it. If the guys who searched your package didn’t find anything expensive in it that they could get you to pay more for, you pay your 1000 francs and wait for the guy at this window to write out your receipt. You then return to the original window and present your customs form once more. The guy will then ask you for some ID, make you sign the back of the top sheet of your customs form, which he will rip off and keep, and then give you back the bottom three sheets of the customs form. Then he will go into the back room where your package is waiting on the table, bring it back, and finally relinquish custody of your package to you. At this point, you can scarcely believe that you actually have your package in your hands, and you flee the building in fear the someone is going to tell you that you need to get eight more stamps and see 14 other guys before you can enjoy the contents.