Pay Day

July 26^th, 2010

            Well today we got our second walk around allowance, otherwise known as pay day. We received 1,392 lempiras for the next 24 days; this means we get 58 lempiras per day which is right around 3 dollars per day. This does not include the money that our host families receive as is solely for us to spend. I find that it is enough for me.

            We also got our atm cards today as well as a checkbook. When we get our sites this is the way that we will be paid, instead of receiving the cash like we do now it will be deposited in our accounts which we can then take from as we need. The banking system here is a little bit complicated but not anywhere near as complicated as the phone system which is Tigo. I think you need a MBA to figure out Tigo. At its most simple form Tigo is a pay as you go phone provider and it is the service that everyone uses here in Honduras. (The other providers are Claro and Digicel. Digicel is said to be best for calling the states and Claro is said to work best for internet so I feel as though they are all in cahoots…) Anyways, you put money on your phone at lots of different places, it just needs to have a Tigo sign outside of it. You go in and talk to the person there and you buy what is called saldo, basically credit. The person will then send a text message to a main computer system with the amount of money you buying and then you will receive a text message saying that you have been credited that much money. Not too tricky yet, but from here it gets confusing, each phone number has a certain day when you get what is called triple saldo. The day you have depends on the last number of your phone number, on those days when you buy saldo you are supposed to get triple what you paid for. I say supposed to because last week when I did it I did not receive triple saldo, very confusing. On Sundays, everyone is supposed to get triple saldo however if you have not used your saldo from before that gets taken from you and if you keep buying every Sunday you keep racking up the saldo however if you miss a Sunday you lose all of the racked up saldo. I think. Finally, the rates of how much saldo you are use depends on where you are at and what you are doing. So I can never say sending a text message costs me this much saldo or making a call this much saldo. It is a very confusing system that I feel is taking advantage of a less educated clientele however that may just be me being pessimistic.

            At this point I only have a Tigo phone however when I get to my site I may invest in a Digicel phone to call home or Claro for internet if I am not blessed to have internet there. This is not uncommon to walk around with two or even three different phones here, it is weird to see at first but then you get used to it. You can also buy phones that take two or even three chips but they are very expensive. The internet works by buying a “modem” which is really just an usb flash drive that dials onto the phone system and then you have internet. You can either get a plan or a pass as you go type of deal as well. Interesting side story that has to do with the telephones here, yesterday morning I received a text that told me I had won 60,000 lempiras as well as a blackberry with 5,000 lempiras of saldo on it. Since I got it at 630 in the morning as was half asleep as I read the Spanish message I got a little bit excited before realizing that it was most likely just a phishing attempt. I asked some of the staff and they all agreed with me, so unfortunately I was not a big winner. This type of scam is very common here in Honduras as well, people will not answer phone numbers that they do not already have in their phone because it is a tactic to call phones here in Honduras and when someone answers you threaten them that you know where they live and you know lots of information about them and if you do not pay you X amount of money then you will _______ (use your imagination here). While it seems scary, there is a very simple and easy defense for this (so do not worry about my safety please!) you simply just do not answer phone calls that you do not recognize.

            Besides all of that information, everything is going well and I am really just trying to learn the language as best as I can. I hope everyone is enjoying the blog posts as much as I am enjoying writing them. If you have any suggestions, comments, or questions please leave them in the comments sections or send me an email. Until next time everyone!