A HISTORIAN REMARKED, Of the an- cient Persian postal system, that "neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." Snow is not much of a problem in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but dozens of rebel groups make delivering the mail rather difficult. So do bad roads and a dysfunctional government. The main post office in Goma, a city of 2m in eastern Congo, is a vast rectangle with turret and colonnade, built by the Belgian colonial government in 1955. Inside it a worker tipsasackof letters from Kinshasa, the capital, onto a table. He sorts them into wooden lockers according to their destined village, town or region. Most will never get there.
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