Peruvian bureaucracy is alive and well

Several weeks ago, my mom sent us a package. It was partly a care package and partly items that I had planned to bring (such as my favorite gluten free flour mix) but couldn’t fit in our luggage. After she went through some trouble to send it, she mentioned it should arrive in 6-10 days. That is, if it made it through the customs process. When she was packing it at the post office, she was given a list of forbidden items. She read it over and discovered that she wasn’t allowed to send food. Hmmm. She decided to chance it and send it anyway. Our waiting and salivating began… we were dreaming about the chocolate chip cookies we would make and the coffee we would drink after the package arrived.

 

Finally, a week and a half later, our upstairs neighbor Christina (who is also the office coordinator at Manos Amigas) knocked on our door. She handed us a document and said, "You've been sent a package, but the post office has decided to retain it."

She told us that you could either pay some money and fax your passport to the post office people, and they might deliver it, or you went in person to the post office and they most likely would give it to you.

Packages could be retained at different post offices, and ours somehow had been retained at the one farthest away from our neighborhood. It might take a couple of hours to get there, depending on the mode of transport used. A taxi would be quicker but would be pretty expensive. A bus that passes on our street might go there; she could check with the girls who work at Manos Amigas. They would know.

I should mention that at the time we had this conversation with Christina, I had yet to do two basic things: hail a taxi on the street and get on a regular city bus. We had heard countless stories (both while we were in the States as well as after arriving here) about the crime level in Lima and how dangerous taxis were in particular. One story that stuck in my head is about how the back seat doors are sometimes childproofed and so once you got in, you couldn’t get out until you were let out, after you’d been robbed and perhaps assaulted.

So, I was a little scared about hailing a taxi off the street. The señora had advised us to only take taxis that we’d called in advance, and for the limited number of times that we’d needed a taxi so far, that is what we’d done. (Except for the memorable time that she called a taxi for us going one way – it was 11 soles – and when I called to arrange the ride home, they told me it would cost 45 soles. “But I paid 11 soles this morning for the same ride!” I told the dispatcher. “There is a tariff on taxi rides from the oceanfront on Sunday afternoons,” she told me. Yeah, right. We took a very long walk back instead. And after the señora heard about that, she called up the taxi company and let them have it. It was nice to hear her sticking up for us. Actually, she was sticking up for tourists in Lima everywhere: “You think you’re going to get away with charging someone an exorbitant fee just because they have an accent? Why do you think people don’t come back to Lima? It’s because of you!”)

While we’d taken the Metropolitano bus, which runs on a dedicated street lane on a very specific route and was therefore easy to find and use, I hadn’t hailed a regular city bus yet. Buses don’t exactly have names or schedules. You flag one down and ask if it goes where you’re going. Everywhere I’d needed to go so far, I either walked or took the Metropolitano.

Back to the package dilemma. Christina said since the post office was so far away, perhaps it would be better to just go through the electronic process and hope that the post office would deliver it. But then she added that she had really pissed off the post office folks the last time she contested a retained package, so if she were the person emailing in our information, there was a decent chance we wouldn't receive it simply out of spite. 

We decided we would have an adventure and go get the package. There was gluten-free flour and coffee in there, after all! No way should we leave it to chance.

Christina thought that having Simon would be to our advantage: “If you can get him to cry too, that might be helpful.” After consulting my giant Lima map and figuring out how we might get there, I thought it might take an hour to get there, an hour back, and maybe a half hour at the post office. We’d be back in time for lunch and Simon could take a nap at our apartment. My nerves were a little fried after I read in my Lonely Planet book that they considered the post office’s neighborhood "one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Lima." Great!

The next day, we walked about 10 minutes to a bigger street, then we caught a bus to take us to the Metropolitano line that would take us across the city. We took that until we got to the street of the post office, then caught a mini bus and took it the rest of the way to the post office. That took an hour and a half.

Conveniently, as we walked up to the post office building, Simon fell asleep in the sling.

Simon asleep in the sling, not on the post office trip but during an artisan visit... you can see how  lovely a sleeping boy can be!

Then we went to not one, not two different windows/people to be processed, but FIVE.

First, the woman who took our paper and inspected my passport told me that I couldn't pick up the package because I wasn't Manos Amigas. Then she told me I needed two copies of my passport and then I'd be called to another window.

Sam had to leave the post office and find a copy place to make said copies. Twenty minutes later I was called up to the window; the official filled out some paperwork and the box is brought out. That was pretty easy, I thought. How great that we are about to get the box!

Not so fast. Two officials cut open the box and started inspecting all of the items in it, making a pile of loot on the table next to it. Sam and I were elbowing each other: look at all that Equal Exchange coffee!

I was quietly panicking that they were about to confiscate items in the box, which would have been excruciating after having a glimpse of all the chocolate, coffee, gluten-free treats, etc, just on the other side of a plate of glass. I was holding my doctor's order for a strict gluten-free diet in case I needed to plead my case to someone, and Sam was whispering quit fidgeting, just look normal.

They didn’t say much to us, just filled out a massive amount of paperwork, taped the box back up, and directed us to wait for official window #3. After another 15 minutes of waiting, I was called to another postal person, who typed a crazy amount of information into the computer for an eternity. Either that, or he just pretended to type while surfing the web!

Finally, he gave me still more paperwork and told me to go to line #4 for my box processing. Sam waited in this line while I sat holding Simon, miraculously still sleeping through the cacophony of this giant waiting room, replete with an intercom in frequent use, buzzers, crashing doors, wailing children, and a loud TV.

The official woman in line #4 stamped information on various sheets of paper multiple times, asked me to fill in passport information, typed still more information into the computer, and we signed for the box. Then we went to door #5 to actually retrieve our box. Finally. We quickly discussed: Should we open it up now and eat some chocolate? No, maybe they would realize their mistake and take it back. Let’s leave.

As we're leaving the post office complex, the security guard stopped us, inspected our paperwork, and carefully wrote something important in his log book. Simon woke up as we left, having slept through all hour and 15 minutes of our post office experience.

We hailed a taxi back to the bus station (and I immediately made sure I could open the doors from the backseat!). The bus was packed. We were exhausted. We got off at our stop and decided to walk until we found the bus to take us the rest of the way (a 30 minute walk). We never found the bus and just walked verrrrrry slowly until we passed a chicken place 8 blocks from our apartment and rewarded ourselves with lunch - at 3 pm - complete with pisco sours for us and chicha morada for Simon.

We got back to our place at 4, opened the box, and commenced rejoicing at all of our loot while devouring Trader Joes’ dried cherries and Swiss chocolate. 

What an adventure! Now we’re hopping on buses like pros and I am even negotiating cab fares with taxi drivers! Who knows what the next package delivery might bring? (Just please include some Equal Exchange coffee and chocolate!)