The riiiiinng riiiiinng of my doorbell has become a frequent element of my Lomé life. It announces things that many of us in the West no longer expect to show up on our steps. As such, the sound of the doorbell represents a major element of Togolese culture I’m still adapting to.
In many places of the world, bills are paid by logging into a website with a credit card. We also mail checks for such things as our electricity or the phone bill. Then there’s the occasional “Take me off your list!” we might send to the magazine that still sends us unrequested issues (I still don’t know how I became an Ebony subscriber).
Not so in Togo. My doorbell rings quite often here, usually calling me to attend to another business transaction. Here are some of the most common examples of this:
- Internet data is pay-by-the-usage here. When I first arrived, I met a guy who works at an electronics shop. He hooked me up with a wireless router for internet and a round of data. Now, whenever I use up my data, I text him to have him load more. He must then come to my house and I pay him in cash. Each time is about $45, and I usually make it three weeks on that. No cat videos for me.
- Phone usage is also pay-as-you-go. The phone guy comes to my house to reload mine, then I pay him in cash.
- Every month someone shows up to give me the electricity bill. I give him cash.
- An elderly man rides his bicycle to my house two mornings a week to pick up my garbage. He carries three or four plastic sacks tied to his handlebars, and he pulls my trash out of the can, stuffs it in his sacks, and rides off.
Before this starts to sound too appealingly Mayberry-esque, remember that I work full time, every day. So usually when the doorbell rings, I am not around to hear it. Unless the person comes at 5:30am on a Saturday or 9:30 at night (yes, both have happened), I usually return home to a note fluttering in the gate or a message scrawled in chalk on my front door. Then begins the process of arranging a time to have them come back and be paid.
All in all though, living here is encouraging me to remember the importance of patience. Each person I pay greets me with a wide smile, and I am reminded that I am contributing to the local economy. The guy who I pay for my internet is considered to be working hard when he comes to my location to collect cash. The elderly gentlemen is still able to provide for his family. Everyone needs meaningful work to feel as though we have a reason for getting up in the morning. And in a place where many people do not have livelihoods, work such as this is valuable.
I’ll try to remember that the next time I hear riiiiiiing riiiiiing before the neighborhood rooster even wakes up.
CHLOE GOES 