Virtual Stamp Collection: Featuring Zebras

Prologue: I wrote this on Monday - while doing my bowel prep... and going on an internet stamp hunt turned out to be a great diversion.

For the past 2.5 hours, I've been drinking 8 ounces of my blue-colored, mucus-flavored bowel-prep concoction every 10 minutes, as directed.


In between gagging down this terrible elixir, I decided to write a letter to my sister to take my mind off of things; not an email or facebook message - a real, honest to goodness, pen-to-paper, letter.

After I was finished, I thought about how perfect it would be if I had a zebra stamp to stick on it. (Carcinoid ribbon color is zebra striped). There is something so romantic about stamps - especially ones that have a faded, foreign postmark, smothering them, as they cling to the right hand corner of a yellowed, hand addressed envelope.

Then I thought - well, hey... there have to be countries that feature zebras on their postage... and how cool would it be to start a stamp collection? While I probably write more letters than most, I too am guilty of indulging in the immediacy of virtual messaging on a daily basis - so I found it sweetly ironic (and immediately gratifying) to create a virtual collection of zebra postage stamps from around the world.

From time to time, I'm going to add to my virtual collection, and maybe someday I'll affix my own foreign stamp to a postcard telling of some adventure I'm having - a miniature zebra winking from behind a smudged ink-ring - symbolic evidence of my triumphant return from the land of cancer.

Congo (1993)

Rwanda (1984)

Rwanda (1967)

Cuba (1970)

Guinea (1975)

USSR (1968)

This is a collage of stamps that I created through a program called Smilebox, which includes stamps from the following countries:

left column: Kenya (1966); United Nations (1984), Rwanda (1984); center column: Angola (1953), Portugese colony of Mozambique Companhia (1937), Belgian Congo (1942); right column: Vietnam (1982), Dependency of Ajman, Manama (1969), Zimbabwe (1980), Republic of Guinea Bissau (1988), Arab Democratic Republic of Western Sahara (1996), Nigeria (2001)

If you happen upon any zebra stamps out there in your travels - please send me a picture :)

Stamp Entry 7/23: Submitted by My Friend Jean in NJ