Getting all my treasures in the mail

Since my time is limited, and since we've had most of our carpeting replaced with hardwood flooring, I've been carpet shopping like mad. But that also means then trying to lug it all over to the Army post to put in the mail to take advantage of the cheap APO rates. That's not easy.

First we drive about 15 minutes over to Camp Eggers. My vehicle is not authorized to go onto the post, so I'm dropped at the gate, which is a LONG way from the post office (for those of you who served at CFC-A before, the post office has been moved to the very back of the old OMC-A). Usually one of the guards or a senior sergeant feels sorry for this petite woman hauling 40 lbs of carpets to the post office, and volunteers to help. Thank goodness chivalry is not dead!

Then I box up my treasures and stand in line to get it mailed. I've never gotten through the line in less than 30 minutes. There's usually one postal inspector to make sure we don't send anything home that we shouldn't, and one sergeant to process the package. Each package takes about 10 minutes to process because of the customs forms, insurance, etc.

I endure all this because we can mail things via APO, which means basically that I'm only paying to ship things from NYC (the port of entry to the US from this region of the world) to Washington, DC. Believe me, it saves a lot on postage.

So for the last several days I've been making the trek to the Army compound carrying tons of stuff to mail home. It's exhausting.

Yesterday I spent almost an hour creating a box for a beautiful wood-framed mirror made in the Province of Nuristan. Nuristan is famous for handpainted, rustic furniture. If I could, I'd ship home end tables and cabinets. But there's a size and weight limit with military mail, so I settled for a beautiful wood framed mirror. I don't really care if the mirror is broken in shipment, I just hope the wood frame arrives in one piece. Of course, there was not a box to fit it and there are no "pack and wraps" here in Afghanistan, so I had to pack it myself. I dug through a large trash bin outside the post office to find study cardboard and Styrofoam to pack the mirror. Thankfully some office at Camp Eggers had received a big shipment of computers, so I found lots of sturdy cardboard and pieces of foam. Next I had to cut it down, shape it, and tape it within an inch of its life in hopes that at least the frame will arrive to my home in good condition.

(I also had to pay a $35 special handling fee, which I think is outrageous, but who am I to argue.)

I've been into the post office so often in the last week that the staff recognizes me. They usually shake their heads and say "not another carpet, ma'am." To which I reply, yup! You can never have too many.

I guess the saving grace here is that I've pretty much run out of cash to make anymore large purchases. So what's the problem, you might be asking? Well, this is still pretty much a cash-only society (no charge cards or checks). And with only 2 or 3 ATMs in the country, it's difficult to get cash. It's a shopper's worst nightmare, and I think a real impediment to true economic progress in Afghanistan. Although I can cash checks on the Army base, everyone is limited to only a few hundred a month--and believe me, it's never enough.

So it appears I'm going to have to be content with what I've purchased. I hope to get the last of it in the mail tomorrow.