Christmas package

I got a call from a phone number I didn’t recognize last Tuesday. It was a man, and about all I could make out was that it was something about “posta” (ie, post, mail) and he wanted my address. Well, since I couldn’t understand exactly what he wanted, and I wasn’t going to give my address to a strange man even if I did, I offered to come to the post office. He asked if I knew where the mail work center is. He gave me all sorts of directions, the only part of which I understood was what major road it was on. So after lunch Mike and I head off to find it. We are driving along the specified main road, stopping to ask random people where this place is. The first guy’s answer is, after a long pause, “I don’t know, I’m a stranger here too.” The second guy’s answer was “I don’t know, it’s my first time on this road.” What’s amazing about the two answers is that this culture is notorious for giving vague, useless, or incorrect directions rather than disappoint the asker with an “I don’t know.”
We found the mail center at the place where Mike thought it might be, and convinced the security guard that we were here for a package. He told us to pull around back of the building. Mike gets out and starts somewhat tentatively into the building. Watching from the car I see him through the windows walk by one way, and then the other way. Then I see a guy pass with a tray full of tea glasses. Then Mike goes by again. After about 20 minutes he comes out and says that although he thinks he’s talked to everyone in the building, and although he was offered packages destined for other foreigners in the city, no one seems to know anything about the phone call or our package. So he looks up the incoming calls on my cell phone and calls the original guy back. In seconds, literally seconds, the guy comes out on the concrete porch with a mail bag.
The package was my Christmas present to Mike—two books (if you want to know what they were about you’ll have to ask him.) Apparently the box the books were in (which didn’t have my phone number) was falling apart so the thing was bundled up in a mail bag and the phone number and our name were all that was on the bag. So now Mike has met and had tea with all the guys down at the mail distribution center. And although they probably still don’t know where we live, we at least know how to retrieve our lost packages!