My Kedougou address:
PCV Melanie Chamberlain
B.P. 37
Kedougou, Senegal
West Africa

Be sure to write “Par Avion” and “Air Mail” somewhere on the envelope!

I know that sending care packages to Africa is expensive.  And I know not all of you can afford to show your affection for me in such an extravagant way.  What I would love most of all is letters and photos of your adventurous lives without me.  Write me a funny story.  Tell me the latest gossip.  Clip that funny cartoon from the New Yorker.  Go into detail about all the minute and seemingly boring things that are going on in your life—I promise, life in Africa gets boring and I will find them very interesting. 

Oh!  And I would really love it if you could take the time to print the email you were going to send me and mail it the good old fashioned way.  This way, I can treasure your letters and re-read them over and over again in my hut when I am lonely and homesick.  Seriously.  My thanks and my love…

Care Package Instructions:
Care packages are the way Peace Corps Volunteers judge each others' popularity.  I would be eternally grateful for a package.  Not just because of all the awesome things inside, but also because it will help improve my "rep".  Also, I will repay each package with a wonderfully detailed letter of how amazing everything was, and you will have some cool used Senegalese postage stamps.  Oh and I will include a shout out in my blog.  Internet fame, fo-reals.

Now, the nitty gritty.  Seal everything in Ziplock bags.  This will protect the contents from rodents and water .  Plus, I get to keep the bags, and I really  love Ziplock bags.  Allegedly the US postal service has these standard-rate envelopes and boxes.  I hear that is the cheapest way to go—and the box/padded envelope is free.

Do not write the actual value of anything on the customs form.  Everything inside should be "used" and shouldn't have a total value of more than $10.  In fact, if you can find a way to describe everything in the package as "used school supplies" that would be the best way of ensuring everything get to me and not the family of a Senegalese postal worker.

Wrap the box/envelope in a couple layers of clear plastic packaging tape.  Make it really really hard for anyone to slice open a corner and take a peek at what’s inside!

Write "Par Avion" and "Air Mail" on the package.  You do not want to send it via boat or it wont get to me until I am back in the states.  Really.  A list of contents is a good thing to include, in case the package gets damaged--looted--in transit.  I will have to pay a couple of dollars to free each package from the post office, so don't send two different boxes if it will all fit into one.

Here is a wishlist, but feel free to get creative: 
- Magazines (Trashy: Elle, Cosmo, US Weekly, People.  Classy: The Economist, National Geographic)
- Newspapers (The A-section of the Washington Post and New York Times)
- Dried Fruit (raisins, craisins, apricots, etc.)
-  Instant Oatmeal (Especially the Cinnamon Roll and Maple Brown Sugar flavors)
-  Splenda Packets
- M&Ms and other chocolate
-  Watermelon Sour Patch Kids (hard to find-but I would love you forever!)
- Drink Mixes (Crystal light, Coco, Cider, etc.)
-  Instant sauce & soup mixes
-  Scented bars of soap
-  Nail polish and nail polish remover (nothing like a pedicure to make me feel almost beautiful)
- BBQ Sauce (goes awesome with our warthog sandwiches)
- Ground coffee beans (we have a coffee press!)