Dear Y,I found out from the news last night why that letter I sent 3 months ago never reached you - it (with its nice stamps and fancy paper) is still sitting here in Timor, along with thousands others, packed neatly in postal bags, stacked up to the ceiling in a room somewhere (i think at the Correios) waiting to be sent on a flight to you. My half-boiled Tetum deciphered the news story to be that the (previous) Government had not paid Merpati (that monopoly airline that flies to Indonesia) its fees for a long time and so thousands of letters now languish in a musty room waiting to be delivered to their right owners. Perhaps when the new government passes its budget and finally pays up, that now out-dated letter may finally arrive in your letter box. Meanwhile, I now understand why people pay through their noses to send things through DHL's 'express' service, even though a parcel can take days to reach Jakarta - apparently the parcels get sent from Bali to Singapore (its main centre) before they get sent back to Jakarta.
It may not make a lot of sense what they do at DHL, but hey, at least your parcel does reach its destination one day, instead of gathering dust here in Timor. I just hope that the delay has not caused you to worry too much. I thought this sculpture of two malnourished and severely underweight Timorese holding their heads in deep thought and worry may afford you some comfort that you are not alone.
Warmest regards,
Tumbleweeed
Your post was linked to on the Living Timorously blog, which doesn't permit outside comments. I hope you'll tolerate this observation which is meant more for them than for you. The person posting had complained that Stanley Gibbons Catalogue didn't list East Timor at all:
ReplyDeleteI believe all the post-independence East Timor stamps are listed in Scott's Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue but are almost impossible to buy internationally...registered-mail orders to Dili via Darwin vanished without trace even back in the UNTAET days, and the current stamps are so scarce they sold quickly, the one time they showed up on eBay.
I've always wondered why some nonprofit organization didn't use them as a fundraising device; also wondered just how much international use they were receiving given their relative scarcity in any condition. (Previous issues were distributed at one time through Portugal or Australia and are fairly easy to buy from dealers, but not the most recent issue.)
There is remarkably little information available online regarding current postal rates, which Timor Leste stamps are still on sale at the post office, et cetera.
Right now they obviously aren't getting any use at all internationally.