The Red Mailbox

The Red Mailbox next to our village’s primary school is my primary drop-off point for writing letters. Over the decades, its bright deep red brilliance has been gradually replaced by a patina of sunburned broken red. And yet, The Red Mailbox persists. It still exists. It existed over thirty years ago, when I went to that very school next to it. Other Red Mailboxes aren’t that lucky: in 2019, BPost—the Belgian posting company that was privatised in 2000—removed over one fourth of the Red Mailboxes all over Belgium in an attempt to “save the company”. The biggest reason might not surprise you: most of these boxes didn’t receive much letters: Volgens BPost is het aantal brieven dat mensen in de rode brievenbussen deponeren, met 60 procent gedaald sinds 2004. Uit een kwart van de bussen haalt de postbode nog hoogstens zes brieven per dag op, luidt het. [According to BPost, the amount of letters that people deposit in the red mailboxes has diminished by 60 percent since 2004] The Red…