Bills

Hmmmm, what kind of bills…..bird’s beaks, paper money, bills you pay?? Well the third choice is the topic today. You might be asking yourself, if I truly think bills are WONDERFUL?? While I do not think  they are wonderful, I do know they are necessary. Let’s just agree that services cost money and you need to know how much to pay.

Anyway, bills have taken on a whole new life here in Niger. This being the first time we have lived in another country, we had grown very accustomed to direct deposit and by the time we moved from PA, we were barley using the US Postal system to pay our creditors. Keep in mind, here in Niger we have fewer bills that come (and I don’t mean by mail…..someone delivers most bills, think we may get one in our box?) on a regular basis…….. Water, Electricity, Phone/Internet. We do not have checks and cannot use a credit card!

Now here is the twist……today, Leron asked if I would STOP BY Sonitel (phone provider) to pay the bill. Yes, here you have to pay your bills in person, you can send someone else, but someone has to go to the office and pay. So, I go in and hand my bill to the cashier who looked up with a very confused and somewhat concerned look. This is supposed to be easy, well, today I was told that I could not pay the bill today because the “machine” was not working. So, I had no choice but to turn around and leave. But before I left, I did raise the concern that our service would be cut off….they have on more than one occasion just stopped service if payment is not made right on time. They assured me that this was not a problem, however it did not give me much peace as that is the response to so many of my questions here…not a problem, Lady…it will be fine. Sometime it is and sometimes it is not.

So there you have it. Some days I just have to shake my head and remind myself where I live. It is still somewhat surreal to me. These of course are the regular monthly bills. We pay our rent IN CASH to a sweet little Nigerien widow that comes to our house every THREE months loaded down with fruit for our family. She sweetly counts out the LARGE amount of bills because the highest bill is 10,000 CFA roughly the equivalent of 20 USD and then looks up kindly and gives a few bills back. This she says is for our children and is quite humbling. So that is rent, other services are payed usually by our guard after someone drops a bill of for services rendered.....I may shake my head, but it works......most of the time. ;) So, I am not thankful that I have bills to pay, but I am very thankful that I have the wonderful resources that allow me to pay those bills for necessary services such as water, electric and of course communications.....