Winter Garden

Make a Plan

This is the motto of Zimbabwe. When you can't get what you want, you "make a plan."

Today, I was with my Austrian friend, Bettina, who has lived in Zimbabwe for six years. She checked her mailbox. Curious, I asked what she was expecting to find there. "A parcel," she said in her German-Zimbabwean accent. I've never lived in a country outside the U.S.A. that had reliable postal service, so I was intrigued. When I'd had my Mom send a test package, it never arrived, so we'd given up on it as an option here.

"Oh, it's quite easy," she said. "A month after it's sent, you just follow up with a petition. We get parcels almost every month from my parents." Follow up? "My parents file a report with their postal service in Austria, and that usually gets things moving on this end. I think the Zim postal service can assume all unclaimed packages after a certain period, so they just hold on to them unless a petition is filed." Right. "But you mustn't let your family send anything during the holidays. It's too tempting. Usually a few things go missing. My parents always write the contents of the parcel on the inside of the carton now so we know if anything's missing."

"And there's customs. They only allow $75 worth of goods to be mailed in per month per family, and anything over, they start charging 40% tax. We made the mistake of leaving some price tags on some toys once. Now we make sure everything is roughed up, and my parents put fake price tags on them for 25 cents or 50 cents. We can always say they were sold at a clearance sale or yard sale. As long as it adds up to no more than $74, it's not a problem. It was quite a hassle getting the trampoline in. My sister unpacked the whole thing, rolled all the pieces around in the dirt and packed it up again. You know, during those years when it was crazy and you couldn't find anything here, you just had to make a plan. But it works quite well. We get parcels every month."