Poste Restante
Poste Restante refers to ‘a department in a post office where letters remain until they are called for’ and is what is normally written on those letters. It comes from the French: poste, mail + restante, feminine present participle of rester, to remain.
It is easy now to stay in touch with family and friends back home when you travel. Email is everywhere and so are internet cafes. I first used email while travelling in 1997, but only my work colleagues had email back then, so it wasn’t very exciting communication. Since then I’ve used email and phone calls to stay in touch.
But during my first big trip overseas when I was 22, and mainly travelling on my own, I planned for the eventuality of craving news and kind words from home by writing up my itinerary with directions on how to use the poste restante service. You write the person’s name, the words poste restante (or Lagernde Briefe in Germany for example), and the city where you expect the person to call for the mail (so old fashioned – how mail used to be before the invention of the postage stamp). It was always a thrill to visit the post office and find letters from home waiting, letters which you could read over and over.
Many years later, in 2003, I used the service again to test out the time it might take a letter to travel sea mail from Mauritius to Bordeaux (recreating an event which took place in 1847 that is central to my book).
I posted this letter from Mauritius, asking that it be sent by sea mail - a difficult thing it turns out to insist on these days for a simple letter. I checked for it in Bordeaux when I was there for research purposes later that year and it still hadn’t arrived (I thought). It had, in fact, gone par avion anyway, and was already then winging its way home to me from Bordeaux.
This time I will be away for five weeks, which doesn’t seem so long, but I don’t fancy spending my days in front of a computer checking my email – really I don’t. I am suffering from computeritis. It would be nice to receive letters though, and should anyone wish to write they may do so care of my mother-in-law’s postman, Postman Prem, who lives next door to her in Mauritius and delivers the mail personally with a big smile, even during cyclones (just remember that it takes a few weeks for mail to get from anywhere to Mauritius, and it should get there by 20 October):
Helen Morgan
c/- Prem Jaggapah
c/- Anita Kinnoo
Circonstance, St Pierre
MAURITIUS
Include a return address and I will reciprocate with a tropical postcard and a lovely Mauritian stamp!
I just saw on flickr that you are heading out on a fantastic journey…how I wish I was coming with you! I hope you DO make it to the occasional internet cafe to keep me posted on a few happenings so I can travel vicariously (hope I used this word correctly) through you. Have a thrilling and safe time! You’ll be missed…
Vicariously is a great word Barb, and I think correctly used here! I’m not sure how I’ll go with Flickr (I will cast an eye over my Contacts’ photos even if I don’t have time to comment I hope) but I am going to try and write some blog posts. And I’m sure I’ll send an email or two!