Paying Bills

To follow my earlier post on doing chores in Rwanda, I thought I’d write about paying bills, which is also drastically different here from what we do in the U.S. There are basically three keys to paying bills in Rwanda: pre-paid, in person, cash only. There are some exceptions, but it’s nearly impossible to use a check (and credit cards are even less common), pay online, or receive a monthly bill for anything, and nothing is automated.

There are hardly any landline phones in Rwanda, and I have a cell phone (two, actually, one for each of the two cell phone companies). Plans or contracts are extremely rare, and nothing is unlimited. Making phone calls and sending text messages are paid for by purchasing airtime cards (receiving calls and text messages is free). You scratch them like a lottery ticket and then enter the code that’s revealed into your phone, which then stores the credit in your phone. Airtime cards are sold nearly everywhere throughout Rwanda, including at dozens and dozens of shops, stalls, and shacks in Nyagatare. The “kiosk” across the street from my house, for example, sells Tigo, though I have to walk to another one down the road to get MTN. In Nyagatare, airtime cards are sold only in denominations of 300 francs ($0.50) and 500 francs ($0.83), though denominations available in bigger towns go up to 10,000 francs ($16.53). The small amounts sold here don’t last long, and I don’t like to spend large amounts of money at once, so I’m constantly buying airtime. Also because I don’t like for people to think that I spend a lot of money, I try to rotate the stores where I get it.

Many Rwandans use airtime to access the Internet on their cell phones, but the surprisingly sturdy Nokia I bought used in Senegal in 2007 doesn’t have that capacity, so I just use my Tigo modem (which plugs into my USB drive) on my laptop. Internet modems here use the same airtime cards as cell phones, you just enter the code on your computer. Both MTN and Tigo sometimes have Internet specials, allowing you to use airtime to purchase a certain amount of bandwidth up front for a cheaper rate and occasionally even to pre-pay for an entire day or week of unlimited access.

Paying for electricity – or, as it is referred to here, cash power – is somewhat similar. Mounted on the front of my house is a cash power box, which is essentially a small machine with a keypad. Everyone’s cash power box has a different number, and I purchase electricity by taking my number to one of the two shops in town that sells cash power. They put the purchase into their network and print out a receipt with a code on it. I take the receipt home and type the code into my box, and, voila, power! Electricity can be bought in any denomination, but I usually buy 5,000 francs ($8.26) at a time – mainly because it’s a good use for the 5,000F notes that come out of the ATM in Kigali but are difficult to break in Nyagatare. That usually lasts me five or six weeks – which I suppose makes sense, considering I don’t expend electricity on a hot water heater, microwave, refrigerator, stove, dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, etc. My biggest single expense is probably the fact that I typically leave my two outside lights on overnight.

Paying for water works a little big differently. The spigot in my yard has a meter on it, which records how much water I use. Theoretically, somebody from Electrogaz (Rwanda’s water and power company) comes about once a month to read the meter and gives me a bill, which I then pay at the bank. However, there’s been some confusion (not helped by the fact that the bills themselves don’t really make sense, even to Rwandans), and the Electrogaz person has actually only come with the bill a couple of times. Go figure. Sometimes, when the spigot is off for too many days at once and my water reserves run out, I have to ask my neighbor to have somebody (usually her son or housegirl) to get water from somewhere else in town and deliver it to me. I pay in advance, so they can buy the water, and usually give them an equal amount for delivering it.

One bill I don’t know much about paying is rent, because my organization pays for my house. I would guess that might be something that is paid by check, since it would be a bigger amount.

Some of these things may work differently in Kigali or among wealthier people, but this is how I pay my bills in Nyagatare.