Posta Uganda

We’ve had a few requests for our mailing address in the last few weeks. We still receive mail at our home in the US. Thankfully Maggie has been sorting through it and helping pay bills. We will be home for the holidays and look forward to receiving your cards and greetings there. You can email me at leistfamily@msn.com if you need our US mailing address.

But … we have also initiated a relationship with the Ugandan postal system in case we need to receive mail over here. I’m not sure how to characterize that relationship. We are certainly acquaintances. Money has changed hands. We are cordial and know each other’s names. But after almost a year, the relationship has not progressed much. Let me explain.

Because there are no house/street numbers in Kampala, mail doesn’t get delivered to your home. If you want to get mail, you have to apply for a PO Box. Thankfully, there is a Uganda Post office about a mile from our house. It is relatively new and conveniently located just steps off a main road with plenty of parking.

We first stopped by in February to sign up for a PO box. We talked our way past the gate guard. Like most things in Uganda, the post office is guarded by a young Ugandan man with a threadbare uniform and a machine gun. We had to “sign in” a massive hardbound book with names, vehicle type and license plate and cell numbers.

We picked up the required paperwork. 3 sheets. With many tasks and instructions.

We had to provide the completed application, copies of our passport ID pages, separate passport photos, copies of our current visas/entry permits and most important, $37.

We returned to the post office a few weeks later to find that the gate was closed and locked. The entrance had changed. We eventually found another gate just up the street (guarded, of course, by a different young Ugandan man with the threadbare unform and machine gun), drove through the grounds of a school, down an alley and eventually to the side entrance of the post office.

On March 29, 2021, Christine, the nice worker at the counter, gave me my official post office “Authority Card”, with our PO box number. Christine explained that a portion of the $37 was actually a “key fee” that would be sent to the central Post Office downtown Kampala. They would make a key for our box and send it out to us so we would not have to check in at the counter every time to see if we’d received mail. Simple, logical. Christine said the following words,

“We will call you as soon as it is ready.”

I stop by every couple of weeks to visit Christine. It has now been 7 months and no key. There is no timeline for the key. There is nobody that you can call to check on the status of the key. Christine cannot tell us, based on her experience, when we could possibly expect a key. Post office box keys in Uganda are, apparently, unexpectedly birthed out of enigmatic black holes that appear without warning every now and then at the Kampala Post office.

Christine is very patient. Every time I come in, she smiles and shakes her head. She has offered a series of explanations:

· “Look at all the others (3 pages of single spaced names) who are waiting ahead of you."

· “COVID” (evidently COVID prevents the making of keys near the equator)."

· “We don’t make the keys here.”

· “The key budget for the day/month/decade/your lifetime has been spent.”

· “We said we would call you when the key arrives. Have we called yet?"

· “Just come by the desk, we will pick the mail from your box until your key comes.”

Confident that the key was coming soon, I have never given out our Uganda address.

I’m not waiting any longer. Who among you will be brave enough to send our first Uganda Post correspondence? My Birthday is January 17th, Scott's is May 7th.

If you do send us anything, a couple of pointers. First, nothing of any real value unless you intend to provide a gift to one of the several dozen folks who will inevitably handle and likely open the card/package. Second, give it a month or so before pinging me to see if the item has arrived.

We can hardly wait to hear from you.

Scott and Sally Leist

PO Box 40278

Nakawa Branch

Kampala, Uganda