All things Rand

In the first few days before we got any of our stuff from home we took the kids to see the movie RIO for something to do.  The kids loved it. 
So, driving through town after that I saw all these road side vendors with bags of wood and hand painted signs saying "RIO".  "Weird" I thought, "RIO must mean wood in one of the 11 official languages of South Africa."  A few days later I had an ah ha moment.  "Ah ha" I thought,  "not RIO, R10"  That would be Rand (R) ten (10).  A bag of wood was 10 Rand, written R10.  Duh!!!!

So it's taken me some time to think in R not $.  The exchange rate is roughly 7 Rand to 1 Canadian Dollar, but prices here include the VAT (Value Added Tax).  So by the time you put the 13% HST on the sticker price of goods and services in Ontario it's just easier for me to divide by 10 to get an approximate cost comparison. 

Paying for things here is sometimes a strange phenomena.  When you are at a retailer paying for goods, they take cash, credit cards and debit/cheque cards just like in Canada but when it comes to services things get weird.

When I need to pay for the gardener, house cleaners, dog kennel or opthamologist it's by EFT (electronic fund transfer).  On their invoice they provide you with the name of their bank, account number, and branch number. Then you just transfer the funds to them via Internet banking. The ophthamologist told me she doesn't like to have cash hanging around which is why she does it this way, even if it takes longer sometimes.  I suppose it's like direct withdrawl or deposit, in a way. I mean I used to share my account information via void cheque with the government and my workplace, but I can't imagine having given my account information to my daycare parents and saying, just transfer me the money.  It's a different system and widely used here.  It avoids the need to carry large amounts of cash which is a safety factor, obviously.  It's just something that is different to get used to.  Account information has always felt like personal information. Much like my passport number I don't like to share it and certainly don't like to have other peoples information, but that's the way transactions are done here, so I just need to get used to it.

Then there is the pre-paid nature of some services.  Cell phones for example.  I can't get a cell phone contract.  In order to get a contract I need to have proof of residence, ID card or passport, have lived in the country for 3 months and have a reference letter from my financial institution saying that I have the income to pay for a monthly contract.  So I prepay.  It's a strange prepay though.  I can go to the Vodacom (my carrier) shop or I can go to any cash register at just about any grocery store or service station in the city.  I can get more air time or more data time for my cell phone, or top up my Internet for home.  They print out a receipt with a 16 or 20 digit code.  I call a special number from my cell phone and enter the code on the receipt and voila, more air time.  It's pretty slick really until you realize that you can only get a limited amount of air time per receipt and pre-paid time doesn't roll over, but ends 30 days after you enter it.  It's also really hard to budget since there is no set amount per month, so now my job is to keep track of how much air time and data I use and try to average it into a monthly amount for our budget.

When I think about it, this is probably pretty similar to pre-paid in Canada.  I use to see the Fido or Rogers cards at the various grocery stores, but it never meant much to me because I had a contract for my cell phone.  So, it stands to reason that, just because it's new for me here doesn't necessarily mean it's because  I'm in South Africa, but instead it could just be related to my particular life experience.  I need to keep that in mind.

P.S.  Happy Father's Day, Dad. 

Next Post -  Thanks Ms. C