This week’s Photo Challenge is Habit – stuff of the everyday, places we go, things we do, people we see.
This is our electric bill attached to our fencepost. Last month, when the electric man came to our house to cut off our electricity…AGAIN…I said, ” What happened to the bicycle deliverer this time?” You see, as hard as I try to be efficient and pay our bills in a timely manner…it’s almost an impossibility on Ometepe Island because good financial habits that I have developed throughout my lifetime don’t exist in Nicaragua.
The first time the electric guy came to our house to cut off our electricity he told me, “The fat guy on the bicycle quit delivering the bills.” In the ‘land of the not quite right’, even though we never received a bill, it was our duty to pay in a timely manner. So, Ron raced off to town on his motorcycle to pay our electric bill, while I entertained the electric shut off guy on my porch and taught him a few English phrases like efficiency, good financial habits, pay bills online, and I am never late paying my bills.
This time, the new electric bill delivery guy was afraid to deliver the bill to us because he didn’t speak English. “Oh my Lord…just tell him to hang it on the fence,” I said. And so, coming home from paying our other bills in town today, the electric bill was posted happily and fearlessly on our fencepost.
Let me explain the Latin logic in our bills. The big stack of receipts…over 3 years of receipts (in the picture on the right) is our Claro internet bill. We didn’t have residency when we wanted the internet at our house, so a friend of mine who had residency used her information to get us the Claro internet dongle. Every month, I have to go to the office to pay the internet bill and every month he asks me, “You are Betty?” At first, I tried to tell him that Betty passed away, and it was my internet bill. But, when he said, “Muchas gracias, Betty” after I paid the bill, I thought… what the heck. I’ll be Betty for the rest of my life as far as Claro is concerned.
The confusion at the Claro office started when I got the Claro phone plan with my residency card. I pay the bills on the same day. “Muchas gracias, Betty,” he said when I paid my internet bill. “Muchas gracias, Deborah,” he responded when I paid my Claro phone bill. I think they are humoring me and suspect that they are dealing with a loca gringa with dissociative identity disorder.
Good financial habits don’t exist in Nicaragua. Very few bills can be paid online…only my SKY satellite TV bill…and that’s from Mexico. The electric company is the only one that delivers the bills from house to house on a bicycle…no mail service here. For the other bills, we play the game of seek and pay. First, we have to find the stack of old receipts attached to the original contract, then pay them in the right office.
It really becomes tricky if we can’t find the stack of stapled receipts because the electric and water bill aren’t in our names. We tried to change the bills to our names…but don’t get me started on that fiasco…which involved Spanish words like abogado ( lawyer), escritura (our property title), and mucho dinero ( much money).
Maybe I really have developed dissociative identity disorder? Paying bills in a fiscally responsible way in Nicaragua is a habit I’ve had to break. It’s the only way to stay sane in the ‘land of the not quite right.’
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