The letters are dead.

In my country, letters are dead. 

The Philippine postal system is one of the most corrupt agencies of government – and mine is a country where corruption is replete and as common as the housefly.  What do they do?  They open your mail in order to see if there’s anything valuable inside.  If there is, then it will be stolen and most likely the mail will end up in the garbage.  Or they’d just make a little hole, a small tear, to peek inside, then tape the torn portion roughly and place a note that says “this letter was received in this condition,” or some such other ridiculous lie.   Every family has a story:  a letter that was delivered late by months or that never reached them at all; a Christmas card that arrived with its envelope obviously torn and then taped together again with a note that says it was “received in this condition”; important documents that have been lost (most likely stolen) or arrived in such a damaged state that they might as well be invalid; letters that were delivered to the wrong address and if not for the kindness of the strangers who pass them on to you would never have gotten to their intended destination; and so on and so forth.

You would think that in a country that has tens of millions of workers slaving away overseas the government would at least have the decency to provide a reliable service that will allow them a trustworthy venue to keep in touch with their friends and families at home.  Sure the internet is there, you might say, and no one writes anymore.  But then you probably never felt what it’s like to be so homesick and lonely, and to suddenly receive a handwritten letter from your family, or a birthday card with sincere wishes that you could be home to celebrate with everyone, or how lonely Christmas would be without you.  The internet is fast, convenient, and reliable.  But NOTHING could be more meaningful than a letter that is painstakingly handwritten, and had literally travelled a long way to reach you.  You keep it safe under your pillow, and reread it dozens of times over until you’ve memorized it, and you imagine the person who wrote it taking the time, pen in hand, bent over the paper, a crease forming on the brow as he or she carefully tries to avoid making mistakes while writing.  NOTHING beats that. 

And how about the foreigners who are here in the country for tourism, business, or any other reason - aren't the postal service employees ashamed of the embarrassment that is our postal system?  Why do we insist on saying that this country is peopled with friendly, welcoming, perpetually smiling citizens, when the first chance they get they will tear open other people's mail?  I'd say the whole situation is deplorable all around.

Nowadays if you want to write a letter and send it out, the next immediate thought is, “Never mind,” because you know where it is likely to end up – nowhere near where or how you intend it to be.  I have about ten thousand reasons to hate the way this country is being run and the people who are running it, and the tragic failure of a postal system is just one of them.  Perhaps not everybody who serves in the postal system is bad, perhaps there are a few of them who are still honourable, but until this has been proven by actual reliable service, who would be stupid enough to believe it?  And until people cannot say that the postal service is untrustworthy anymore, shame and curses upon you all who steal or open other people’s mail.