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| My little Nokia phone served me well. |
If memory serves, I bought my first cell phone in 1999.
Since then, I have purchased a few phones along the way, but I have never owned
a smart phone or any type of phone that does more than just make calls and send
text messages. So it was a bit of a surprise to be told that many, if not most
Peace Corps Volunteers have BlackBerries or a phone with some type of internet
access. I was one of the few in my group that hesitated at first – I did not
buy anything more than a cheap phone until I was at site for a month. But I
caved eventually and found the money to buy a BlackBerry. For my location, it
really is the most reliable way to have regular internet access, and for better
or for worse, that is important to me. I like to be able to look up sports
scores, check the weather, or just send an email to a friend when I think of
it. I used to be able to do all those things on my computer, but when you live
without electricity, that really isn’t the most efficient way of doing things.
So, apparently joining the Peace Corps is what finally made me get a smart
phone. Didn’t see that coming.
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| Airtime vouchers - an essential. |
Besides having to get used to a new type of phone, I also
had to get used to a new type of cell phone plan – or should I say, lack of a
cell phone plan. Don’t get me wrong, plenty of South Africans have cell phones
with monthly plans, but they also have something called credit, which I am
sorely lacking in this country. Instead, I pay for everything with “airtime.”
In essence, airtime is the same thing as having a prepaid cell phone, it just
has a special name and you almost never get what you pay for – depending on how
you buy you may get more or you may get less.
There are basically two ways to buy. First, if you have a
South African bank account (which I do), you can connect your cell phone number
to that bank account. Then, when you want more airtime to make calls, send
messages, or buy data to use the internet, you dial a few numbers and the money
is taken directly from your bank account and added to your phone. When you buy
this way, there are often rewards or points that you earn, and eventually,
these points can be used to buy more airtime, so you end up getting more for
your money. The second most common way to buy airtime is to buy a little slip
of paper (called a voucher) for a pre-determined amount, and then you type the
code from the voucher into the phone and the money is credited to your number.
You can buy these vouchers virtually anywhere: and I mean anywhere. No matter
how big or small the shop, they will sell airtime vouchers. As you walk down
the main street in town, you will see small shacks or tables with one person
sitting at it selling nothing but airtime vouchers. When you are waiting in a
minibus taxi to go to another town or just back to your village, it is nearly
guaranteed that someone will come up to the window and ask if you want to buy
airtime in the form of a voucher. The small shop in my village, as well as my
host family, re-sells airtime vouchers that they first buy in town. But none of
this airtime is sold for the actual value of the voucher. In all of these
cases, it costs more. My host family, for example, sells airtime vouchers out
of their home. You can buy R5 of airtime for R6.50 or R12 of airtime for
R13.50. So in the end, the people that have the least money available to them
(so little money, in fact, that they don’t have need for a bank account)
overpay the most. Not an uncommon phenomena, but a shame nonetheless. Here’s to
hoping that one day everyone will be able to find ways to get more airtime for
their money.
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