"Excusez-moi, est-ce que vous êtes Mlle Clark?", said a voice from behind me as I was walking up the stairs to our apartment. I obviously answered "Oui" to this sweet little older woman who was standing at the bottom of the stairs.
The woman then began to tell me that apparently someone in the building has been removing our names (Maggie's and mine) from our mailbox (we had taped a piece of paper with our names on it underneath the owner's name so that we could receive mail). I was shocked, but this woman (Mme. Gergot) was OUTRAGED that someone would do that to us. She continued to tell me that she had noticed yesterday that our names were no longer there, so she put them back up along with a small sign saying "Please do not remove", in French...both of which had been removed as well.
Apparently, when she was younger, Mme. Gergot spent a lot of time in other countries such as Germany, Japan and England. She told me how she knows what it feels like to be a foreigner, and that it's hard enough to live in another country without people being so rude. Her experiences abroad, however, were much more severe than the removal of her name from her mailbox. In Germany, she had her tires slashed on several occasions by some lunatic who didn't think she deserved to be in the country. When she studied in Japan, her landlord kept all of her mail for six months because he "didn't want to interrupt her studies". In Japan as well, when she tried to give blood, they told her that they didn't want the "dirty blood of a white person".
Clearly, our situation is not that bad.
But for her, she could not even begin to believe that in her own country, and in this day and age, someone would be so intolerant and impolite to us.
Conveniently, there happens to be a shop across the road from our building where they make signs and stickers. She decided that she was going to take me there immediately so that we could get something made that would not be easily removed. At the shop, she explained the situation to the man who worked there and how absolutely disgusted she was with the situation. He immediately started to make us our sticker. Mme. Gergot also put in a special request for a STRONG adhesive.
Ten minutes later, while I was still in shock from Mme. Gergot's kindness, we walked back to the apartment with the man from the store who was carrying the sign and the strong adhesive. He then personally put the sticker on our mailbox (see picture), and I must mention, at NO charge. And that thing is not coming off easily, that's for sure.
Afterwards, M. Gergot was so worried that we may have missed our mail between last nignt and today that she personally called the post office to check. She then called our apartment by the intercom (meaning she would have had to go all the way downstairs and outside to call us) to say that the post office will check and resend any mail our way.
So all in all, today I met that nicest french woman and the nicest sticker man on the planet.
