Going Postal

The level of pot luck and guesswork required here to get even the most basic things done is little short of Olympic. Take posting a letter for example…

In descending order of effectiveness, here are the best ways to get a letter out of Qatar:

As if to ruin my pithy observation about their rarity, I saw my second Q-Post van this week

1 – Personal courier: give your letter to someone travelling to your country of origin for them to post on arrival. An expat classic

2 – An actual courier: you know, an international company that tracks stuff, has a reputation to uphold and has done this before

3 – By owl

A very distant 4 – Using Q-Post, Qatar’s state-run mail operator.

I’m not sure what Q-Post staff do all day, because in two years of living here I’ve only ever seen two of their vans – and the second of those was just a few days ago.

But I know what they’re not doing: delivering post to your home anytime ever. The lack of a residential postal service is not surprising considering Doha is very much a work in progress, one where most of the streets have no name.