After more than three weeks since it was sent from Jeddah, I found the letter lying among heaps of others at the place where I work. Looking at the stamp, I saw it was mailed 22 days earlier. What can be wrong? We all know and have heard similar stories. The fault may not be entirely with the postal service. It is the delivery system which forces thousands of people to look for their mail at their workplaces. Instead of having our mail delivered to our houses, people are forced to give their workplace as their mailing address. I cannot understand why we are separate from the rest of the world when it comes to mail delivery.
If you go to the most humble places on earth, you will find the houses and streets with names and numbers which make it easy for mail to be delivered to them.
In Britain the mailman and the milkman build social relations with the local population that may last for their lifetimes. In the United States the postal service is a federal department and every citizen has the right to receive and send mail. In a country of more than 20 million streets and some 250 million residents, all the streets have names and all the houses have numbers. Mail can therefore be delivered easily. But why cross oceans and seas to cite what goes on in those countries? There is a truth much closer to home. Our maids, drivers and workers often come from the most remote parts of Asia. They confidently send letters to their families, secure in the knowledge that those letters will be received in even the smallest villages. When those same people are waiting for a letter from home, however, they have to ask their sponsor every day if a letter has come for them. If one has, it probably came to the sponsors’ workplace and he must then remember to deliver it.
It is indeed unfortunate to be obliged to resort to every geographical feature in our country to give directions on how to get to your house. These directions often result in people wandering past gas stations, schools and mosques and never finding the house they are looking for. Wouldn’t street names and house numbers simplify everything for everybody?
