One of the downsides to being the posh corps volunteer with the nice house and the electricity is that I have to pay my electric bill. The problem is not the principle of the thing, nor even the money, but that the electric company is a government sponsored monopoly with no particular reason to ever invest in concepts such as efficiency, customer service, lack of corruption, or not wasting people's time. In Morogoro I received paper bills, from the receipt of whence I had a week to go to the electric company office and pay, after waiting in a line that can easily last 4+ hours. Since many volunteers travel through Moro and would stay with me, I could often barter getting someone else to go pay my bill (I provided the money, I just hate waiting in lines) in exchange for free lodging, coffee, and sometimes food and cake and wine, depending on how domestically productive I felt like being. This was a good system. Then I moved to Mbeya and am mostly alone in my house. Up until this month, I have not had to pay for my electricity. Alas that all good things must come to an end. Two weeks ago some electricians came and installed meter thingies outside all the apartments and also somehow messed up the wiring in my apartment.* Apparently the system now is that instead of getting a paper bill, I get a credit card, and I take the credit card to the office in town and give them money, and they put money on the card, and then I can use the card to put units of electricity on this meter. I started out with 50 units, free and gratis, which was actually nice of them because it meant everyone would have a grace period. Since I have no intuitive grasp of how much electricity 50 units is or how fast I use units** I betook myself to the office rather promptly, because I dislike not having electricity and since I have a teaching schedule, with grading commitments I can't simply go to town anytime I feel like it. I also have neither domestic staff nor children that I can make run my errands, which I think is how most Tanzanians rich enough to have electricity handle the electric company's terrible ways. So I show up at the office only to be told that my card hasn't been activated yet, go to another person at the office to have that done. This other person, though apparently just sitting in front of a computer not doing anything refuses to contemplate the notion that my card could possibly be activated any time before the next day. Or the day after that.
If this were America, I could yell at people for wasting my time and expecting that I can be in town day in and day out. Since it's Tanzania, I bought butterfly fabric and went to cry to my dressmaker, who understands my needs.
Today, with some trepidation, I tried again to pay for some electricity. To my shock, not only does the card now work, but there is no line to wait in before putting money on these meter cards. It's still not as nice as internet bill pay, for which I pine, but it's a great improvement over the paper bill lines.
*one of the outlets stopped working so now I can't plug in the refrigerator and the oven at the same time, and when the stove is on, touching anything on the stovetop gives me a fairly painful electric shock. This means that I have first world problems! I'm very excited about this.
**Seriously. They are just called units. What these units are, we do not know. Though in all fairness, if I found out the units are something real like kilowatt hours, I still wouldn't have any intuitive grasp of how much electricity that is.
as long as it works....
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