Paying the Bills

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When living and functioning in a country, you learn the intricacies that visitors are spared. I find paying the bills quite strange - no bill arrives in the mail. You need to know the date when the bill is due and physically visit the office to pay it. For example, we had a telephone line installed in our house. We left a telephone number so that they could call to remind us that the bill needs to be paid (in some cases by the end of the day) or the telephone gets shut off. If that happens, then you need to pay the charges to reinstall the telephone. Ugh. I’ll keep you posted on how this system works.

Less strange, but still weird is getting used to paying everything in cash. Yesterday, Tadas and I paid a hefty chunk of the school’s tuition in cash. Several thousands of dollars to be paid in the Ethiopian equivalent of $10 US bills. We had a stack of money that was over 3 inches high, stuffed in money belts all over our bodies under our clothes to get from the bank, via the not-so-very-safe public transportation to get to the school. I felt pounds lighter once we paid our debt!

Regarding the costs, they are all over the map. As examples of the costs - you can get fantastic coffee/espresso/cappuccino in quite pleasant cafes for $.25 - .50 a cup. The public minibuses cost $.07- .20 per trip. On the other hand, to get our kids to school, we need to hire a private taxi that costs over half my entire month’s salary. Our rent is $550 per month - pretty cheap for a small house, but expensive on a $200 monthly income. Mobile phone rates are cheap at about $.15 a minute, but it costs a minimum of $78 to get one phone. In Addis, the prices are much higher than in the rural areas. For instance other volunteers have household help that they hire for $40 a month they have a cook, cleaner, laundry, and guard. For us, we are still strying to set something up in order to get help, but it looks like we’ll be looking at prices 3 to 4 times higher than that per month. Again, we are very grateful to friends and family who supported us generously before our departure. Our friends assistance is helping us live a bit more normal daily life.

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