"Stop Making Sense"

I have a friend, Meghan, who is volunteering with WorldTeach in Rwanda for a year. You can check out her blog here. Her recent post completely describes what we often struggle with in Tanzania as well. Even if someone happens to speak the same language, the meaning is not always understood. You can imagine this happening in anything from getting erasers for my classroom from the Tanzanian office staff, to explaining the procedures for cleaning to our house help. We definitely have plenty of opportunities to learn the virtue of "patience" here in Africa!

"When we arrived in Kigali, I headed to La Posita (the post office). I had been told by three different people from our group that I had two packages waiting for me there. Our Field Director had gone to see if she could pick them up since they were send c/o her. However, she only managed to get the smaller one out for me. When I arrived at the package pick-up area, I told the man at the counter that I was there to pick up a package. He asked if I had a package pick-up slip. I had been warned about these. “They always ask for a package pick-up slip, but no one has ever actually received one.” So I told him no, and he brought out a large book of names, which I was also warned about. You are supposed to find your name in the book and provide identification proving that you are that person, and then they go retrieve the package for you. While I’m sure the names are entered in the order that the packages are received, there are no dates stating when the package arrived and having no idea of the volume of package traffic they had, I had no clue where to start looking. After 15 minutes of searching name by name and passing several names of people I knew, I started getting a little frustrated. I knew my name had to be in there (someone from our group had sent me a text message a few days before saying that she had seen my name in “the book.” ) So I asked the man at the counter if this was the only book they had. “yes, there’s no other,” he said. So, I continued looking.

Finally I spotted my name, but it had been signed off by my field director, so I knew that this was the smaller package. I showed it to the man and asked if it was possible if there were two packages under this same entry. “No,” he said. “And this one has already been picked up. If there is another package, this person would have picked it up too. But probably it has not arrived yet.”

“This is impossible,” I told him, “I was told that there were two packages here under my name.”

“If it is not in the book, then it has not arrived,” he answered firmly.

So I continued looking with no luck. Now I was getting really frustrated. “Can you just look in the back and see if there is a package by this name?” I asked. “ No, if it is not in the book, then it has not arrived yet,” he replied. “No,” I countered, explaining again, “When this person came to pick up the other package, there were two packages.”

“That is impossible. Because then she would have taken that one as well.” He was getting visibly impatient with me.

I was getting equally impatient with him. Even though he spoke English very well, I knew that there was some invisible communication black hole between us in which lay the meaning of my words and the unspoken, commonly understood workings of the Rwandan parcels office. And probably my package. I didn’t know how I could be anymore clear that there was another package for me and that it had arrived. And he didn’t know how he could make me understand that my package was not there. I took a deep breath and told him, “No, they told her that she was not allowed to take it. She tried to get both, but they would only let her take the smaller one.”

“…oh… your package is not small?”

“No.”

“Then, it is in this book,” he said, his voice immediately calm, as he pulled out another book.

In my head I rolled my eyes and thought to myself, “Meghan, you just need to stop making sense!”

This new book was much neater, and after about 5 seconds, I found my name three pages back.

If a Rwandan had come to pick up a package, never having set foot there before and never having discussed the procedures of package pick-up, I’m fairly certain that with a glance or two and maybe some eyebrow motions they would have had their package in their hands in under 5 minutes. No wonder my students have such a hard time with critical thinking skills and rationalized communication… who needs those when you’re born with an innate sense of knowing what’s up."