Probably the only bad thing that has ever happened on this trip involves the phone that we have been using. Grimm got an international cell phone for our trip so that we could call home when and if we needed to. He got a great deal on it and all of our calls would only cost 19 cents per minute. So naturally, none of us were not too worried about how long we talked on the phone because it was relatively cheap, considering the next closest price we found was 5 dollars per minute.
But right when we thought everything was great, things changed. We were in the internet café emailing our family and significant others and friends. I was telling Spud that this was probably my favorite two hours ever that I had spent on the internet because it was so nice to hear from people from home and write them back. As we left the café, Grimm looked over at us and said that he had bad news. The bad news he told us was that the 19 cents that we thought we were paying for each minute on the phone was actually what we paid only when we dialed a local Tanzanian number. In reality, we were paying $7.95 per minute for every call to the U.S.
This naturally rocked my world. Its not everyday that a bill increases to forty times that value. This also naturally stopped virtually all phone calls that we made home. Today however I decided that I had to call home because I needed some information that only my parents could give and that I couldn’t get from them in an email before I left. One the way out I jokingly told the guys that my call was going to be 1 minute and 59 seconds because once it gets to 2 minutes and 1 second it charges you for 3 minutes. I called my mom really fast and was getting ready to hang up when I asked her who was going to be picking me up. I then quickly spit out and I love you and good bye and hung up. I looked down at the phone to find that my call was for exactly 2 minutes and 1 second. So I had essentially paid 8 dollars to talk with my mom for 1 extra second. If this happened 59 more times, I would have paid 480 dollars for one minute of talking on the phone. I would also like to note that I will probably have to work at least 1 and 30 minutes when I get home in order to pay for that 1 extra second of talking on the phone. All of this makes me hope that the owner of this phone company doesn’t sleep well at night.