Sending and receiving mail is a funny thing here in Botswana- or at least it seems so to me. Botswana Post, the official national postal service, does not provide home delivery. So, if you want to have a place to receive mail, you either rent a postal box or depend on your place of work to receive your mail at a corporate postal bag (pictured above).
I receive mail at the postal bag that my office has. This bag has to be picked up at a post office that is quite a ways off the beaten path of Gaborone Central. The Botswana-Harvard drivers only retrieve it a couple times per week. Our bag is apparently only for envelopes. If a package has arrived addressed to me, the bag will contain a slip that can be redeemed for the package. However, we don't find out that there is a package slip until the bag has been unlocked and opened-- back at the office. This means that the package won't be picked up until the NEXT time a driver goes to the post office, which can add days to the amount of time it takes to receive a package.
On average, it has taken letters 10 days to get here from the USA and packages 30 days. I mailed my Christmas cards on Monday, so hopefully they will arrive soon. If you are interested in stamps of Botswana, I posted some pictures under an entry called "Botswana Philatelic Society" in August.
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