Kuti
In
the year 2000, mail seemed to magically fly to the top of a hill, into a
window-full apartment part-way up a tall white building sprouting satellite
dishes. The letters and packages said “Kutia 150,” the mailing address for a
hundred or so people, the international families living in Kosovo and working
with believers and churches. Theoretically there was mail service in many of
our neighborhoods or villages, but it was sporadic and prone to being rifled
through. Getting our mail was an event, a visit to the office and English
library, a chance to catch up with others coming for the same thing.
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We graduated to an individual street address in 2006, in Macedonia, a change which was lonelier but elegant…until the mailman showed up. We loved the short, grizzled mailman – but he was nothing close to elegant. He would push the buzzer outside on the ground floor (we lived two up), we would hear “poshta” in a gravelly voice through the intercom and head down the stairs. After we opened the door on the ground, letting in the blinding, dusty sunshine, he would stand for a moment, looking at us and back down to the mail, peering again at us as if memorizing us for future identification, his cigarette stub trailing smoke from his fingers holding the letters. “Poshta” again, as he handed over the stack suspiciously. He unknowingly was one of the high points of our days.
Several
years before, the Chinese
邮件 Yóujiàn was also a communal experience, delivered to us in groups, the “foreign teachers” or “foreign students” (depending on the year), handed around by a director or teacher or colleague.
邮件 Yóujiàn was also a communal experience, delivered to us in groups, the “foreign teachers” or “foreign students” (depending on the year), handed around by a director or teacher or colleague.
We graduated to an individual street address in 2006, in Macedonia, a change which was lonelier but elegant…until the mailman showed up. We loved the short, grizzled mailman – but he was nothing close to elegant. He would push the buzzer outside on the ground floor (we lived two up), we would hear “poshta” in a gravelly voice through the intercom and head down the stairs. After we opened the door on the ground, letting in the blinding, dusty sunshine, he would stand for a moment, looking at us and back down to the mail, peering again at us as if memorizing us for future identification, his cigarette stub trailing smoke from his fingers holding the letters. “Poshta” again, as he handed over the stack suspiciously. He unknowingly was one of the high points of our days.
Then
there was La Poste in 2009.
Exceedingly organized, polite and cheerful, refined, punctual, and gentile.
And
here we are, at the most independent and flower-bedecked kutia we have had (although still not recovered from the snowplows!), and the first one we
have owned.
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