| Scatterlings of Africa* |
Volume
3 – Utilities and Services
|
| In this issue | |
| Utilities and services |
Utilities
and Services
In America, there is so much we take
for granted. For example, I know there is a Bell Atlantic office
in Manchester, NH where you can go and pay your phone bill.
However, most people receive their bills in the mail and pay by
check using the mail. What would it be like if everyone had to go
to the nearest Bell Atlantic office to pay the bill? It would be
a pain in the –ah – neck – but Bell Atlantic would
probably have a row of cashiers and a streamlined process to
minimize the pain. What if they had just a couple of cashiers and
you had to wait on a long line to pay. And then if you wanted and
itemized bill you would have to get on another long line? What if
there was a place where every utility or service was like this?
Impossible, you say. How could it function? Well, there is such a
place. It's called Maseru. Utilities and services in Lesotho are
a thing to behold. It doesn’t take long for you to become
cynical when you enter a place of business and see a sign that
says "Customer Service". I took the picture above in
front of the telephone company. Note the ubiquitous razor wire.
Unfortunately, the guy with the machine gun was not there when I
snapped this. I doubt he would have wanted his picture taken
anyway. You have to suspend your American concept of service.
Remember TIA – This is Africa.
Garbage
You wouldn’t think that this would be
a big deal. You either have your garbage picked up as you would
in a city or you take your garbage to the dump as we used to in
Deerfield. However, this is one of the most important services.
You see, most service people are impersonal faceless bureaucrats
in some city office. Not so with the garbage men.
Electricity
Electricity is a prepaid service. There is
a magic box on the wall near the circuit breaker box. The
electric lines from the street go into this magic box and then
into your circuit breaker box. This is a high tech box. It has a
keypad and an LCD display. The display tells how many units of
electricity you have left. If it gets to zero your electricity
shuts off. You buy your units and are given a sixteen digit
alphanumeric code to enter into your magic box to recharge it. It
only works on your box. You can’t use someone else’s
number since it is keyed to the code on the box.
When we first moved into the new house, there are so many things to do and concerns on our minds that electricity was not high on the priority list. Back home the electric company would send you notices weekly for a three months before they shut off electricity. We are NOT back home, however. The landlord has assured us that he has charged the magic box with plenty of units. Yeah, right! He has charged it with plenty of units for an empty house whose only electric use is the outdoor security lights – not for a family of five with two computers, stove, TV, lights everywhere and a geezer – uh, I mean, geyser.
It’s Friday night. For the three days I have been thinking that I should find out how to buy units and charge the box. I have not done this before. I am not sure if I know what buttons to push to see how many units are left. Next week I have to get one of the missionary crowd to help me out and, maybe, go with me the first time to buy units. The kids are watching a video. I’m working on the computer. Mom is baking something for tomorrow.
Boom! Lights are gone, the video goes off, the stove with the half baked cake is off, the computer shuts off while writing to the hard drive. Worse, the security lights are out. . Hordes of local criminals have seen the lights go out and are making their way towards our house to storm the razor wire gate. – Not really, of course. But what the hey, who is rational at a time like this. We’ve been in Lesotho all of a month and we have heard all the war stories and are overwhelmed by having to live with security lights and razor wire and the lights are out and the phone is ringing and I’m half walking half crawling as I feel my way towards the stairs and do we have any matches and where did we put the flashlights and will they work and my eighth grade English teacher, Sister Mary Holypicture, is going to give me an F for having a run on sentence and – What do I do now!! (Before panic makes us total zombies, the security company calls. The alarm system has a battery backup, and the power outage is sensed at their control room and so they call to see if all is well. THAT'S service - a privately run service, mind you, that is vital to peace of mind.)
Electricity is provided by the Lesotho Electric Company. Like everything else here, you pay in person by queuing up on line. You can pay at the post office or you can pay at their main office near the train yard. I usually go to the post office since the train yard area is not as safe.
We have survived the weekend. I get to the post office early on Monday so I don’t have to wait long. Inevitably the computer is down and I must come back later. C’est la vie. It was worth a shot. I come back later. I wait for 40 minutes on line. The people in front of me are buying their units. One pays R100 (A hundred Rand). Another pays R200 and a third has waited this long to pay R50. I really don’t want to stand on this line every week. When my turn comes, I slap down a thousand Rand on the counter. You can only buy units in blocks of 900 units or less. This costs about R280. I buy 3 blocks of 900 and a smaller block with the remainder of my R1000. I am given 4 sixteen digit codes. I rush home and enter the first number into the magic box. The first time I enter the number it says, "REJECT". I must have made a mistake. My palms are sweaty. I carefully enter the number again. "ACCEPT" it says in its squared off LCD letters. I throw the breaker. The hum of electricity comes to my ears. We are saved.
Water
WASA is the Water And Sewer
Authority. WASA presumably makes sure that the water is safe and
that the sewer system works. You get a bill each month by mail,
and – and they will accept a cheque (that’s a
Brit-RSA ‘check’) as payment. You go to the main office
down by the train station to sign up as a new customer. The fee
is a modest R75. You can pay your bill here or at the post
office. To insure that they get paid for service when a person
leaves a residence, they bill the next person moving in for any
unpaid balance. Neat trick. I gladly pay the outstanding balance.
This practice is not uncommon. We did not face this problem with
the electricity, since electricity is pre-paid.
Although the water seems fine, we have been told that after heavy rains the water can be questionable. Some ex-pats boil all their water. Some use filtration systems. Many don’t do anything. We boil our drinking water but then use plain tap water for brushing teeth and rinsing our mouths. This, of course, makes no sense since bacteria don’t know that they are not supposed to bother us if we are just brushing teeth and not drinking them.
I paid my first bill along with the outstanding previous balance, only to find that my second bill contained all the old charges plus the new ones. The new charges were even higher than expected. They generally don’t read meters regularly (yards are locked, you know), but rather they estimate the usage. Of course, they had been estimating low for our house. When we transferred the account to my name, they sent a man to actually read the meter, which showed a much greater usage by the previous tenant. This new reading ended up on the second bill, which was quite high, especially since all of the previous charges were still on it.
The meter is contained is in a 2 foot cubed brick box that is underground just inside the gate. The only part that is above ground is a metal cover. You lift off the metal cover and peer inside the brick box at the meter. Our box was filled with water. When the man came to read the meter, he had to bail it out with an old tin can to reach the meter. There was a small leak in the joint where the pipe from the street met the meter. He must have reported this matter. One day 3, men came into the yard unannounced. The gate was open because we had an electrician in working on a faulty ground circuit. They proceeded to smash the brick enclosure with sledgehammers leaving large pieces of brick and rubble in the driveway. Lois happened to be home and asked them what they were doing.Of course she didn't understand a word. She went and got the maid (Yes! We have a maid – missionaries with maids – go figure - more on that another time) to translate. The men showed their WASA ID cards, but never made it clear why they were breaking up the brick enclosure. They left soon after that, and 3 months later the situation is unchanged (except, of course, we moved the rubble to the side to get the car in the driveway. Thank goodness they didn’t affect the water coming to the house. TIA
Telephone
Well, most of you know the sad telephone
tales we had. Getting a phone can take 6 months or more. We were
lucky – ours took about a month. Our landlord knew someone
high up in the company and we already had a line coming to the
house. One friend had a second phone installed for business
purposes two years ago and got about a months service out of it.
It has just recently been repaired. They have been paying on the
phone for the entire time. Why pay for no service? It seems that
if you pay and can prove there was significant loss of service
you can get a refund. But if you don’t pay you lose the
phone line and number which will be given to someone else.
We had repeated phone problems for the first month. The phone seems to be working well now, except when it doesn’t. That is, when noone’s phone works. Recently much of the city was without working phones. People could get calls but could not dial out. This went on for weeks. Phone service is provided by Lesotho Telecommunications Company (LTC). LTC occupies a fortress in the center of town with armed guards making a visible presence – and I don’t mean armed with police pistols in holsters. Like everything else, it is protected with high walls covered with razor wire. There is a ratty building which has public access in which is housed the ill-named "Customer Services". Here is where you pay your bill – after waiting on the ubiquitous queue. You do receive your bill by mail, but there is no breakdown of calls. If you want to see that, you queue up and pay them R20 to print out a copy. The good thing is they, also, will take a cheque.
One time, I went to pay my bill and there was a box on the counter near the queue of people. It said that you could deposit your cheque in the box and a receipt would be sent to you by mail the next day. I waited on line for 15 minutes not daring to put my cheque in the box. Finally, I decided "What the hey. It's worth a shot and maybe I wont have to stand on line anymore". I put the cheque in the box and left. I did not get a receipt the next day .. or the day after .. or the day after that ... or ... , well you get the picture. However, I did get my next months phone bill the next month and it said I had not paid the previous months bill. (I bet you saw that coming.) In the same mail delivery, I receive my bank statement with the cancelled cheques including --- yep! -- the cheque to LTC. So I goes to LTC and waits on the line and finally gets to the counter. "My current bill was incorrect because I paid the previous months bill", says I. ." Where is your receipt", says they. "I don't have a receipt", says I, "but here is the cancelled cheque to prove it." "You need a receipt", says they. "This cheque is my receipt", says I. "you need to write another one", says they, "We can't accept this one." "You've already cashed this one", says I, "and the money has been deposited in the LTC account. It seems they can't figure out what a cancelled check is. They want me to write another one (for last months bill) because the one I have in my hand has bank cancellation stamps on it. I try to explain to no avail.
Finally, a more senior person comes over and figures out that I am using the cheque as proof of payment. "You only need to pay this months bill", says she. "The reason why last months bill was carried forward was because we received your cheque after the new bills went out", says she. "Yeah, Right", thinks I. You see the bank's stamp on the check indicates that they deposited the cheque 3 WEEKS after I put it in the box. That's why it missed the billing cycle. I know what REALLY happened. Nobody ever looked in the box. One day (3 weeks later), someone idly opened the box and saw the cheque. "Son of a B..." (or the Sesotho equivalent), says they, "Lookie here. Someone actually put a cheque in this box. This is the first time I've ever seen this thing used." Needless to say, I don't use that method of payment anymore. Besides, the day I went to argue my case, the box was gone. I haven't seen it again. TIA.
These folks will have you counting your blessings to have Ma Bell. It’s not all their fault, however. The phone man who came to the house said that the phone system should be all cellular. It seems that the wire system is hard to maintain. Wires are routinely cut down and sold for the copper – talk about poverty.
Of Herdboys and Microwaves
There is no telephone service to many
remote areas. Communication is by radio. To reach these areas in
the mountains would require microwave transmitters and receivers
atop the mountains and hills. This is not beyond today’s
technology since with solar panels these units could be unmanned
and virtually maintenance free. Except for the herdboys.
The herdboys make up an important part of rural culture. Wealth
is measured in animals – cows and sheep, primarily. The
herdboys take care of these animals for the villagers. They are
often out with the animals for months at a time high in the
mountains and in severe weather as well. Each winter a number of
the boys freeze to death in snow covered mountains. Many of the
herdboys are children. Because of their isolation from normal
social groups they often grow up with distorted values and can be
pretty violent. There is not much to do except fight with other
herdboys for sport and the pleasure of dominating someone else.
What does this have to do with communications systems? Well it seems that one of the chief sports for herdboys is vandalism of unmanned equipment. They are apparently quite good with slingshots that wreak havoc on solar panels. We can land a probe on Mars and protect it against the most severe environments nature can throw at us, but we can’t seem to protect equipment from the devious mind of man – even if the ‘man’ is only an uneducated 12 year old boy armed with a slingshot.
Cell
Phone
Everyone has a cell phone (or
two or three). You can get a cell phone in the time it takes to
wait on the queue and reach the cashier at VCL - the local cell
phone provider. The cell phone is this country’s lifeline in
communications. The service is generally good but is not like
USA. And to get roaming in South Africa you have to keep going
down to VCL and bothering them.
This is also a prepaid service. Like the US, you are charged per call and per month. However, you pay in advance and you never know how much you have left. You do not get a statement in the mail with your calls itemized so you can see if you need to pay again or if you were billed incorrectly. If you want a statement, you go to VCL and wait on another queue. When you get to talk to the representative you ask for a statement of your account. You tell him what period of time (e.g. month of March) and he enters it into his PC, puts paper in the printer and hands you your itemized statement of calls. The service is free. If you find you need to pay more, you go to the cashier line and pay. If your service has been cut off, you go to another line to have it restarted. They do not accept cheques. I pay by credit card. I really don’t want to have to come here every week either , so I pay R1000 at a time.
Banking
If you consider the general utilities like
government, their inefficiency is explainable. However, banks are
going to be efficient – right? Wrong! Banking for us has
been better of late. Our bank is in Ladybrand, RSA (Republic of
South Africa). Although we have a checking account, this is
basically a cash economy. As such, banks always seem to be
crowded. All banks – and I mean ALL banks - in Lesotho and
RSA have security doors on entry and exit. It’s like a
spaceship airlock. There is a red and green light on each door.
If no one is in the airlock then the light for the outer door is
green. You enter the first door but you cannot open the second
door until the first door closes. When it closes, the second door
light turns green and unlocks. The first door light turns red and
locks. You enter the bank. When the second door shuts the process
is repeated for the next person outside the bank. There is a
matching airlock for exiting the bank. Most bank employees work
behind a closed-in area – tellers deal with customers
through windows with small drawers between them to pass money and
papers. There are also airlocks for bank employees to get in and
out of their protected area.
One time when I was in Durban, I tried to find a Standard Bank (my bank). I went to another bank's ATM window to ask the guard that is usually there. I saw two uniformed young men and went to ask them. As I got close I noticed they both had machine guns with hands on triggers. Oi vay! "This is a stick-up", says I jokingly. NO, I didn't. I may be stupid, but not THAT stupid. I asked if they knew where there was a Standard Bank. One young man politely answered me and even took his finger off the trigger to point the way.
I once had an English acquaintance who was getting his American citizenship. He said he finally understood America. It was all about Money. Money made it run and everything was related to money. I thought of this as I tried to open a bank account. In America, to open an account all you have to have is money to deposit. Nobody cares who you are or what you do (or where you got the money) – you have money in hand. Here, it is quite different. Get a cash advance of say $3000 (R20,000) on your credit card and try to open an account. No way, Jose. You need a job and proof of a job in the form of a letter from your employer. That is, if you’re a man. If you’re a woman – forget it. You can’t open an account without permission from your husband. And money? It doesn’t matter how much you have. No job – no account. Job but no money – you can have an account. The biggest benefit I got from working a couple of days a week at Maseru Prep School was that I could get a letter from the school saying I was employed there.
Go to the grocery store here in Africa and use your credit card. The charge shows up 2 or 3 days later on your American account. There is no waiting except for the normal wait while the machine verifies your card and prints your charge slip to sign. Go to a bank and get a cash advance. You need your passport, where you lived in the US and your phone number there, your mothers maiden name. Come back in an hour and maybe by then you will have approval. Finally, everything goes through and you get your money. Six weeks later the charge finally shows up on your American account. Go figure.
Banks in Lesotho are much worse. I have tried to open an account there but I can’t even figure what line I’m supposed to be on. And the lines are always long. Sometimes I wonder if they hire people to stand on the lines all day to make the place look busy. Since Lesotho is basically a cash economy people must go to the bank often. On busy days, there will be a security guard outside the airlock regulating how many people can be in the bank at one time. I don’t think this is related to building occupancy and regulations of a Fire Marshall. One time in Maseru, as I passed a bank early in the morning just before opening time, I decided to count the number of people on line outside the bank waiting to get in. There were 105 people standing on line! This country builds patience in people.
Since only a few places take cheques, you either use cash or use your credit card. I don’t like to use the card for every little item because you lose track of how much you spend and what it is you bought since it doesn’t show up on your statement for a while. And your statement goes to someplace in the US. Therefore, it is necessary to have a stock of cash on hand or you will be going to the bank every few days and living your life in queues. I cash a cheque at the bank for R3000. It is not safe to carry large amounts of cash around. I make sure the bank visit is the last errand in Ladybrand. When I’m done, I go straight to the car and drive home and find a safe place to stash the money in the house. One day I’m with Nu and Min Joo. Nu asks me how much I am getting. I stupidly whisper that I got R3000. She says. "DADDY, YOU GOT 3000 RAND. WOW!" in a very loud voice. Oi vay! Later, Nu and I have a talk about the incident.
The End
Well, there you have it – a
glimpse into the meaning of TIA - This is Africa..
We are not exactly selling off our worldly goods and living in a
grass hut. But, then again, this ain’t Peoria. What about
the Basuto people. What is life like for them and what is the
culture like? Well, that’s another story.
Sala Hantle
pz
updated
8/31/2000 6:30 p.m.
Ferguson and Pezzano Home Page
Copyright © 2000, R. A. Pezzano
*Scatterlings of Africa-From the title of a song by Johnny Clegg.