The postcard that took five years to arrive

At first, Maarten van Geldermalsen thought his grandsons were playing a trick on him.

A postcard sent by the four boys had arrived in his letterbox on 5 July, 2024 from Petra, Jordan.

“That’s odd,” he thought, as his grandsons were currently in Richmond, two of them living just across the road from him. But when he looked at the date it was sent, he realised the postcard had taken nearly five years to reach him.

“It was sent on 3 September, 2019 - who knows where it has been all this time?” Maarten ponders.

The postcard was addressed to him and his late wife, who sadly passed away four years ago.

At the time, Maartens grandsons, Jawad, Mohammad, Daniel, and Yousef were living in Jordan. The postcard showed Al Khazneh, where they had visited that day.

The message read: “The view we climbed to”.

All the boys now live back in New Zealand.

“They’d forgotten about it, of course,” Maarten says.

The boys think the postcard had “maybe got stuck somewhere” or “slipped behind a cupboard somewhere and that somebody found it”.

A spokesperson from NZ Post says it’s “rare” for post to be delayed by this long, but “it does happen from time to time”.

“It’s hard to know what might have caused the hold-up in Jordan, but given it was sent in 2019 it is possible it could have been tangled up in the Covid supply chain issues.

“We are very pleased that Maarten has finally received his very special postcard from his grandchildren,” the spokesperson says.

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