You've Got Mail (nope, not so much)
It is funny the things you miss and the things you forget when living abroad. Just like it is funny how we take some things for granted and make assumptions about necessities. I have been in Bolivia for just over 2 months and I have not received one piece of mail. No letters from home, no junk mail, no bills, it is not because my family and friends don't love me it is because the postal service in Bolivia shut down. There are rumors of it being open again, and when you look at their website it looks like it is all well and good, but here's the thing...no one cares.
I asked my sister in law if she knew if the post office was up and running and she had no idea if it was nor that it had not been. I have seen expats ask online, but Bolivians don't seem to know or care because it seems no one really depends upon the postal service. If you need to pay your bills then you need to go to the pharmacy, or the bank or the office and pay your bill, if you don't pay then you best be ready for no electricity, phone, wifi or service it is that simple. I know that on the 15th of the month I need to pay my internet and cable bill before 5pm because at 5:01 I won't have my internet and cable any longer until I head to the pharmacy and pay my bill.
This may seem backwards if you are coming from America but the reality is, I don't miss having a mailbox stuffed with garbage and bad news. While fun mail is always fun, it really doesn't make sense for me to assume that in a country where there are possible more roads with no names than those with that any mail would ever get to where it needed to go anyway.
Today for example I was going to interview at a pretty prestigious private school, and it was in fact located on a street with no name. When I asked for directions they just sent me a GPS ping of where it was located, because it doesn't actually have an address. The same was true for both other schools that I visited. My church is also on a street with no name.
And I am living in a city of over 4 million people, there are many towns and smaller cities that have no post office even if the post was being delivered. If I wanted I may not even be able to Google Map it, so here we are with no mail, and you know what? We don't miss it.
I asked my sister in law if she knew if the post office was up and running and she had no idea if it was nor that it had not been. I have seen expats ask online, but Bolivians don't seem to know or care because it seems no one really depends upon the postal service. If you need to pay your bills then you need to go to the pharmacy, or the bank or the office and pay your bill, if you don't pay then you best be ready for no electricity, phone, wifi or service it is that simple. I know that on the 15th of the month I need to pay my internet and cable bill before 5pm because at 5:01 I won't have my internet and cable any longer until I head to the pharmacy and pay my bill.
This may seem backwards if you are coming from America but the reality is, I don't miss having a mailbox stuffed with garbage and bad news. While fun mail is always fun, it really doesn't make sense for me to assume that in a country where there are possible more roads with no names than those with that any mail would ever get to where it needed to go anyway.
Today for example I was going to interview at a pretty prestigious private school, and it was in fact located on a street with no name. When I asked for directions they just sent me a GPS ping of where it was located, because it doesn't actually have an address. The same was true for both other schools that I visited. My church is also on a street with no name.
And I am living in a city of over 4 million people, there are many towns and smaller cities that have no post office even if the post was being delivered. If I wanted I may not even be able to Google Map it, so here we are with no mail, and you know what? We don't miss it.
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