Today Hugo took a day off and we went together to Jayapura. One of Hugo’s main goals today was to order some parts for his motorbike, a 2005 Yamaha Scorpio 225cc beauty. There aren’t that many Scorpio bikes around. Mostly the police use them as they are the largest motorbikes you can buy here. The local dealer in town will only do warranty service so we went to a dealer in Entrop, a town near Jayapura. There they did not have the parts in stock but were willing to order them. But maybe we could try the dealer in Jayapura first. So we go there. Nope, they don’t sell spare parts, try the one in Entrop.
While we were in Jayapura anyways, we decided to stop in at the post office there. I had heard that sometimes packages get “stuck” in the Jayapura post office and don’t make it to Sentani. I was directed to a warehouse type building behind the post office itself. There I was directed to a little office in the back. There were piles and piles of bags of mail and packages everywhere. There seemed to be little rhyme or reason to it all. In the office of the man I was told would help me, there were more packages lying in what seemed like random piles. I saw packages with names of friends on them, people I know! I got excited and thought maybe I would be the bearer of many gifts today. But, sadly, I couldn’t take any of those or any of the tons and tons lying in the little room off the office. They haven’t been passed by customs yet, I was told. I deflated… But, you can take any of these small ones, the man said and proceeded to dump a bunch of envelopes and a box out of a large bag. These don’t need to go through customs. Wouldn’t you know it, the one and only box was for us!!! Yippee!!! I went through the pile of envelopes and took all but two of them as I knew the adressees of them. I had to pay 5,000 rupiahs per envelope to have them released into my hands and then I had to sign the back of a little paper saying that I had taken those envelopes. I did not have to show any identification at all. He just trusted me when I said that I knew the people and would make sure they got their mail. I asked him about a package a friend had sent me a long time ago. He took out a hard covered notebook and went back to the month of June and every single package that had come from outside the country was listed in that book. The place of origin, the addressee and their address were all noted. Not a computer in sight! I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to everything if the gentleman in charge of packages from outside the country were to quit or not be able to work anymore… It was really really painful for me to leave that office knowing that there were so many more packages I could have delivered…
Aahh, but in the end we had a nice day and enjoyed some pizza for lunch from Sarpino’s. Mmmmm mmm good!!