Folks,
I found this to be an interesting read. Please enjoy.
Have a good day, Gassa.
washingtonpost.com
Send Your Regards But No Pencils, Please
By JoAnn M. Hornak
Sunday, June 9, 2002; Page B05
MILWAUKEE, Wis.
When I went to my local post office recently to mail a parcel of chocolates and magazines to an American friend in Tanzania, I was a little taken aback by the clerk's question: "Does this package contain Japanese shaving brushes?"
"Japanese what?" I asked.
"Japanese shaving brushes," he repeated, poring over a booklet as he spoke. I thought he was joking. Hara-kiri daggers, maybe. Vials of poisonous sarin nerve gas, rancid sake, literature of the Aum Supreme Truth doomsday cult, certainly. But shaving brushes? What possible damage could result from sending a First World shaving brush to a Third World nation, I wondered?
I assured the clerk that there was nary a bristle among the chocolates, and he sent my parcel off on its journey across the world. But, my curiosity piqued, I began my own journey through the obscure but intriguing rules in the U.S. Postal Service's International Mail Manual -- the courier's compendium of worldwide postal regulations (available on the Internet at http://pe.usps.gov, click on the index for "Countries and Localities"). What I found was a curious mix of the bizarre and the predictable.
The United Arab Emirates understandably prohibits pork products. The Islamic Republic of Iran naturally prohibits fashion newspapers and magazines containing illustrations of nude human figures. And there may be a good reason for Australia to turn away all used bedding in order to protect the public health.
But what is the harm, I wondered, in sending salt to Syria, playing cards to Spain, gramophone records to Benin, pencils to Sri Lanka or eau de cologne to Lesotho?
And why does tiny San Marino -- a landlocked enclave in the middle of Italy -- have one of the longest lists of prohibitions, including "albums of any kind (photographs, postcards, postage stamps, etc.)", artificial flowers, musical instruments, typewriter ribbons, "clocks and supplies for clocks" and "toys not made wholly of wood"?
Albania bars "extravagant clothes and other articles contrary to Albanians' taste." (I wonder if there's a training course for that rule?) The strait-laced bureaucrats of Malawi refuse to accept aphrodisiacs. And while many countries specifically prohibit pornographic, vulgar or erotic materials, not so Vatican City, undoubtedly an oversight.
Some rules have a historical flavor: Vietnam doesn't permit "invisible ink, codes, cyphers, symbols or other types of secret correspondence and shorthand notes." Others are just plain puzzling. Jordan, for example, bans the import of medicinal preventives against venereal diseases. Israel wants nothing to do with "used beehives" (new ones are presumably okay). Thankfully, there is little fear in sending the wrong thing to Kiribati, which restricts only "dyestuffs obtained from coal tar." But don't try sending anything to North Korea where "All merchandise is prohibited." And how to explain the fact that Swaziland and Zambia, countries not otherwise known to be on the cutting edge of progressive politics, reveal a surprising stance against prison-made goods?
In all of the hundreds of countries, territories and colonies listed in the International Mail Manual, I could find only one other nation with a ban on Japanese shaving brushes: Uganda, Tanzania's northern neighbor. But Kenya, which borders both countries, has no problem with brushes, Japanese or otherwise. Which makes me wonder whether there might be a cross-border business opportunity for an enterprising Kenyan in a van marked "Magazines and Chocolate."
JoAnn Hornak, a Milwaukee-based freelance writer, has lived in Japan and Tanzania but has never tried carrying a shaving brush from one to the other.