Happy New Year!
Our electricity bill arrived a couple weeks ago, due a week from “receipt” (which our neighbor took care of for us). This isn’t like the US, where you can just mail a check, though.
First of all, since almost no-one has a checking account, checks are pretty much useless. Also, few have real street addresses, so mailing things gets a little tricky. And, of course, you wouldn’t want to send cash through the mail (not to mention the high price of postage). So, you have to go to the local office of the SBEE (Societé Béninoise d’Enérgie Electrique).
Most people send a “petit” — a little kid — to take care of this mundane task for them. After all, you don’t have to pay kids, and they have the most free time of anyone. We’d also heard that if us “yovos” go in person, we might have bribes demanded of us. Happily, I can report that the latter was not the case.
What did happen was two trips and 2.5 hours in line.
Since the bill was due on 12/28 or so, Phoebe volunteered to go a day or two after Christmas to pay it. Much to her dismay, the SBEE was closed, the security guard said, for “alimentation“; in other words, the guy was out at the marché getting food for the week.
“Come back Monday,” said the guard.
Monday, of course, would mean that our bill would be paid late, but we complied. Going together this time, we figured it couldn’t take that long to pay the bill, and we would hit the marché after. Boy, were we wrong.
Think of the DMV/RMV, then take away computers, air conditioning, and those little machines that give you a ticket, preserving your place in line, and you pretty much have the SBEE-Houegbo office.
We got there about 10 am and were shocked (not really) and dismayed (really) to see that the line was already out the door. Amazingly, the line stayed fairly orderly, except for a couple skirmishes along the lines of “He cut! Hey, you, stop cutting!” — happily resolved. I only lost one place to a cutter.
An hour or so later, Phoebe left to head off to the marché, and I finally approached the front door. Once inside, a quarter of an hour later, I came upon the following: a bench along a back wall and two benches across the room arranged in an “L” with a desk amidst them. As one person gets up from the L-bench, implorations and imperatives fly from the wall-bench for the folks at the L-bench to scoot down. Then, the person at the far end of the wall-bench gets up, walks to the end of the L-bench and sits.
Just before getting my seat on the wall-bench, a flurry of voices insisted I advance to the head of the line. I gingerly left the line, but a gentleman near the front became indignant. I (wisely, to my mind) returned to my place in line, where I was warmly welcomed. A couple of other times, this happened, but I didn’t bite (I’m not sure whether they thought I was being foolish or proud then).
After an hour or so of scooting along benches, I finally got my turn to go up to the desk.
The man at the desk was obviously in no happy mood — who would be after stamping and signing hundreds of bills, counting money, re-counting money, demanding change, and giving change? A kid a few places before me gave him a stack of nine or so bills that the man then had to painstakingly add up on a calculator (no receipt tape, even). Another guy in line gave him two bills totalling 90,000 fCFA, about $200! For comparison, our bill (for about a week) was 590 fCFA, about $15. Maybe he ran a buvette.
Finally, my turn at the man, I dutifully handed him my bill and my change. He checked that it was correct, stamped the back, signed, and handed me my receipt.
“Merci,” he said. For what — waiting 2.5 hours, paying my bill (late), having the right change, or just being a respectable or respectful citizen, I’m not sure.
What I am sure is that we won’t be paying my own SBEE bill again if we can help it. We’ll be sending a petit.
