Phones!

18 July 2008

Today is Friday… which means that we really need to get the phone line on order. Who knows how long it will take them to actually install it? We head back to the Cable & Wireless office in Grand Anse carrying our passports. The salesgirl began filling out our “Application for Residential Service” form. She needed our mailing address… no problem, we have a PO box; our physical address… a bit more difficult, since there is no street name or number where our house is located; and directions, with a description of the house… directions? There are no STREET names! So we described the appearance of the house & told her who our neighbors were. Then she asked if we knew what the phone number is of the nearest Cable & Wireless customer… what? Apparently, they need to know that in order to assign us a phone number. Anyway, we gave them the phone number of the tenant who was living in the house for the past year. (Don’t know if that’ll be “close” enough!) We had a chance last night to review the 3 options for the high-speed internet line… prices range from $29.60 to $93.25 per month. We chose the cheapest one. Of course, the actual phone line is an additional $9.90 per month… taxes would be added to that. (But I have no idea how much the taxes are for this!) So we paid the bill, including the >$187 deposit required (because we’re not citizens), and left the store with the DSL modem. They said they’d call when the workmen want to come to hook up the connection. Now we wait (again). Later in the afternoon, we received a call from Cable & Wireless telling us that they needed to copy the document showing that we are landowners. We happened to have it with us, so I was able to take care of that without an extra trip home.

For as long as we’ve been planning to move here, everyone’s been asking us: “What will you do there?” Well, can you see that it takes forever to get anything accomplished here? It seems that we spend most of our time as scavengers… looking here & there for what we need to complete each task. It took us 3 days to get this far with the phone!

Oh… and I’m still shopping for a coffee maker!

We made arrangements to pick up the couple from Atlanta tomorrow morning. We’ll spend the day with them and take them to the market downtown then have lunch at the Nutmeg Restaurant. I’ll report on that in another entry!

Photo Description: We’ve been noticing these trucks hauling lumber all over the place today… The lumber shipment must have just come in!