“Religious Materials”

If you are going to send a package to a foreign country, don’t instruct your mom to put “Religious Materials” on the customs slip unless the box actually contains “Religious Materials.”

My mom very generously offered to send some packages to me, and because packages sometimes get “lost” through the normal postal service she decided to send them by DHL. Based upon the recommendations of the volunteers who have been here for more than a year, I told my mom to write “Religious Materials” on the customs form, since “Religious Materials” are not something a thief would be looking for; my instructions to do so were a huge mistake.

Since I can easily see this story becoming a 30-page novel if I write in my normal style, I am going to outline the series of events with bullet points.

• Early September: My mom offers to send me some packages with a few necessities such as my malaria medication, some extra t-shirts, and some other things, as well as some gifts to give the students during the Christmas celebration we are planning and some treats/snacks for the house.
• Mid September: My mom confirms the packages were sent by DHL, and they should arrive in a few weeks.
• 25th of September: I receive a phone call from DHL Karonga notifying me that I had a package waiting for me to be picked up in Karonga.
o I later receive a message from Ryan Dugan that customs in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, wanted to speak with me.
o I receive a text from my mom telling me two packages are on hold in Lilongwe; she’s not sure why.
• 26th of September: I receive my package from DHL Karonga full of delicious snacks and treats for our house.
• 27th of September: I speak with a DHL Representative named Steve from the DHL office in Lilongwe. He informs me that I have two packages labeled “Religious Materials” that customs has put a hold on because they want to know what types of “Religious Materials are in the package.
o I tell Steve that I’m not sure what all is in the packages. I tell him that they were sent by my mom and they did include some prescription medication, but that the rest was probably religious books, teaching materials, and maybe some other things to be used by the Catholic Secondary School at which I volunteer.
o He informs me that customs needs to know what exactly is in the package, and he asks if he can have permission to open the boxes.
o I ask him if I can try to contact my mom to find out what is in the boxes.
• Due to the challenges of communicating across continents, I am unable to contact my mom.
• After a weekend out of town, I finally get a hold of Steve again on September 30th. I give him permission to open the packages. My friend Steve tells me he’ll give me a call back after he opens the packages.
• October 1st: Steve calls me and informs me that there are no “Religious Materials” in the package. (I kinda saw that one coming, and I’m feeling like an idiot for telling my mom to write that on the customs slip.)
o I ask Steve, “So what does this mean.”
o Steve replies, “Well, there will probably some duties to be paid.”
o Since cell-phone time is very expensive here, I tell him, “Okay. Can you find out how much the duties will be and call me back?”
o Steve agrees to do so.
• October 3rd: Steve calls me back and tells me the fees customs wants to charge amount to 54,000 Malawian Kwacha. That equals about $385.71US.
o I think to myself, “Holy !@#$!!!”
o I tell Steve that I’m a volunteer and there is no way I can pay that.
o Steve is very understanding, and suggests to me that maybe I can come down to Lilongwe (an exhausting 8 hour journey from Karonga) and meet with customs.
o I tell him it will be very hard for me to leave campus, and I am not sure if I can get transport all the way to Lilongwe.
o I ask Steve if there is a phone number at which I could call someone from customs, and he tells me he will have to look it up.
o I agree to see if I can find transport to Lilongwe while Steve agrees to look up a number for me to call.
• October 7th: I call Steve to tell him I’m not sure if I have transport to Lilongwe, and I ask him if there is someone I can speak to from customs.
o Steve tells me someone from customs will be coming into his office in a short time, and he will call me back.
o Steve calls me back and tells me he has a customs officer with him.
o I speak to Mrs. Jemombo, a customs officer.
o My cell phone continues to run out of units and our phone call gets cut off several times.
o I am able to convey to Mrs. Jemombo that I cannot afford the 54,000 Kwacha fee.
o Steve calls me back and tells me that Mrs. Jemombo has left, but that he can meet with her again and try to negotiate the fee.
o I thank Steve for his work, and ask him to call me back after he meets with her.
o Steve calls me back and informs me that he was able to negotiate the fee with Mrs. Jemombo, working her down to 12,000 Kwacha per package. This is still much more than I would like to pay, but I consider it a victory and tell him I can pull together the funds.
o Steve asks me if I could come to Lilongwe to pay the fee. However, it has to be before the end of the weekend since the customs officer he has been working with is transferring to another location on Monday.
o I tell him I will have to look into transport and will call him back when I find it.
• October 8th: I am able to find a ride to Lilongwe, and I call Steve to tell him that I will be there tomorrow afternoon.
o Later that day, my ride falls through, and I have to call Steve to tell him that I can no longer make it to Lilongwe.
o Steve asks me if I can make it to Mzuzu and pay the fee at the DHL office there. (Mzuzu is only about a 4 hour journey.)
• October 9th: I call Steve and tell him I have transport to go to Mzuzu to pay the fee, and I will be there Friday afternoon.
o Steve asks me to call him when I get to the DHL office in Mzuzu so he can confirm that I make the payment.
o I make plans to take a mini-bus to Mzuzu, to withdraw the money from an ATM with my ATM card, and then pay the fee.
• October 10th
o 5:30AM: My alarm goes off and wakes me up.
o 6:08AM: I board a mini bust to Mzuzu
o 10:57AM: Just as the city of Mzuzu comes into sight, I realize I had forgotten to take my ATM card out of my desk.
 My ATM card is still in Karonga, and I do not have enough money to pay the fee.
 I try to come up with ideas for what I can do. My first thought is to go to Western Union.
o 11:17AM: I go into a shop and buy some cell phone units—I figure I’m going to need them—and I ask the shop owner where I could find a Western Union
o 11:34AM: I walk into Western Union and explain my situation to one of the tellers.
 My first plan was to call my mom and have her forward me the money. The teller reminded me that Chicago is 7 hours behind Malawi, and the transaction wouldn’t come through for another 4 hours when the Western Unions open there. Now what am I going to do?
 I ask her if I can have my friends in Karonga wire me some money.
 The teller asks me if I know Sarah or Emily. I’m amazed and tell her I live with them.
 It turns out the teller is named Emma, and she is friends with two of the other volunteers who live with me!
 Emma tells me that I could have them wire me money through Western Union, but I will be charged a pretty sizeable fee.
 She then suggests having my friends deposit the money into an account with the National Bank of Malawi in Karonga so that, with her help, I could withdraw the money from the National Bank Branch there in Mzuzu. In this way, I wouldn’t get charged any fees.
o 11:57AM: I contact the volunteers in Karonga and explain the situation.
o 12:39PM: The volunteers reply, informing me that they can make the deposit, but that it might not be until 2PM.
o 12:45PM: I explain to Emma that my friends will be able to make the deposit, but that it might not be for an hour or so.
 I ask her if there is somewhere I can get lunch while I wait to hear from them.
o 1:30PM: After eating lunch, I hear confirmation that the money has been deposited.
 I meet back up with Emma who then escorts me to the National Bank where we will make the withdrawal.
o 2:15PM: After waiting sometime in line, we find out the money has not come through.
 I call Kat, the volunteer who mad the deposit and she agrees to look into it
o 2:22PM: Kat calls me back and tells me that the Bank in Karonga is offline, so the deposit hasn’t made it into the system yet.
 Emma agrees to wait with me until 3Pm when the bank closes to see if the Karonga branch comes back online
o 2:58PM: Still no money, so we give up for the day. I decide to stay in Mzuzu for the night so that I can settle the issue in person.
 Emma offers me a place to stay at her house.
 I gladly take the offer.
 Since Emma has to return to work until 5PM, she arranges for a ride to take me to her neighbors house until she gets off.
o 3:26PM: I meet Emma’s neighbor named Rachael. Rachael actually lived in Karonga for several years and is a Roman Catholic who was in the choir and a liturgical dancer for the Masses at Chaminade Secondary School. Her father still lives in Karonga. Rachael has two very adorable daughters, and we quickly pass the time chatting and getting to know each other.
o 4:45PM: Emma’s niece Desire comes to pick me up from Rachael’s house, and shows me to Emma’s house. Emma arrives home shortly, thereafter, and we spend the evening watching movies, including one Nigerian movie that proved to be very good. Emma also had numerous visitors who probably came over to meet the Muzungu visitor from Karonga.
o 10:32PM: Emma shows me to their spare bedroom where I sleep the night.
• October 11th
o 7:00AM: I wake up and share breakfast with Emma while watching an Usher Live Concert DVD.
o 7:45AM: We depart for the bank to make our withdrawal, hoping that the branch in Karonga came back online.
o 8:17AM: We make a successful withdrawal of the money, and I make my way to the DHL office.
o 8:45AM: I meet Blessings, the DHL manager in Muzuzu, who graduated from Chaminade Secondary School in 2000. He was the Headboy (equivalent to a Student Council President in the US, only with many more responsibilities) of the school. I pay the customs fee, and I head back to the bus depot.
o 8:53AM: I speak with Steve who confirms that the packages will be on their way to Karonga once the accounts department confirms my payment.
o 10:33AM: I board a mini-bus back to Karonga after exploring Mzuzu for a while.
o 2:01PM: I arrive home to the volunteer house in Karonga, greeted by a strip of toilet paper tape stretched between our porch pillars with a sign reading “Cross the Line for Success!” Molly, Kat, and Emily all came running out cheering and clapping and gave me high fives as I walked through the front door that had a specially made sign reading “Welcome Home!”

It was quite the adventure, and I hope I never have to do anything like it again.

After it all was finished, I asked Steve how I could avoid a situation like this in the future. He said, “Well, nothing that was in the packages was really an issue for customs. Most of it was simply foodstuff. The real issue was that what was on the customs form for declaration did not actually describe what was in the box. Next time, simply articulate what is in the package, while making sure that it doesn’t add up to more than $20-30 worth of materials. As long as it’s under that price, customs won’t care, and nobody is going to be interested enough in it to steal out of it.”

If I had only been friends with Steve a few weeks earlier.