Remember some of my adventures with the electric company?  Sit back and laugh with me as Kara tries to adjust:

On 5th Ave I ask a few people on the street where they pay their electricity and they point towards the Banco Industrial hole in the wall entrance that only has an ATM and tunnel like passage with a defunct metal detector and a security guard with a an AK47. I tell him I am here to pay my “power” and not electricity (after being corrected a few times) and he scoots me over to one line. The line moves fast for the people with their paper bills, but I do not have one, I am paying our landlady’s bill and she lost her paper trail. I tell them her address and all the identifying info for her and they smile and shake their heads. “Disculpe, solo podemos utilizar el contador.” We can only use the meter number to identify her house and the bill. I point at their computers and ask if they can’t find her in the database. No, they tell me, those are only for keeping meters and costs incurred by meter numbers. “But numbers are made of people,” I tell them and ask is there no way to connect her to her address? Well, maybe they tell me, but I have to go to the BIG Banco Industrial and the MAIN Empresa Electrica. At this point Brad is about to take a Tuk Tuk home, but I ask him to go along with me so we can figure out how things are connected.At the BIG bank we move through line quickly and we get to the teller and ask to pay the bill. “Do you have the meter number?” She asks. I sigh. “I had a feeling you’d ask me that.” She sends me upstairs, but before I go up we ask about where we can pay online so we don’t have to go through this again. She doesn’t have the Web address, but she informs us that as long as we have a Banco Industrial account, we can pay online. But what if you don’t I ask? She shrugs, we move upstairs as the storm breaks and the skies weep from the weight of it. Upstairs at the BIG Empresa Electrica, I expect a computer-lined hallway with massive databases. A security guard, also with a gun, greets me and so I tell him we need to connect a person to her address to get her meter number and then pay her bill. She walks me over a few inches to the phone next to him and dials customer support for the National Empresa Electrica. Brad sits down and watches the rain come down. I wait and wait and go through two attempts to connect her name to her address to her meter. “Favor de asegurar que ese es el nombre del la dueña.” But that is her name and that is her house and everything is under her name, I inform the representative. Well, I’m sorry, he tells me, but she does not exist in his system. I tell him, just try one more time, but just by street to find her name. “I’m sorry, señorita, but then you would get someone else’s bill and that’s private information.” Now, I tell him, do you think I would really pay someone else’s bill if you pulled it up and that didn’t match her name? I tell him to look one more time but just by her street name. He refuses. I ask him if he likes baseball. He says, yes, of course. Then strike me out, I tell him, give me three chances and if on the third try nothing comes out then I hang up the phone. Silence. “I’m sorry, I looked under her street name, and she is not in my system. I guess that means you’re out, too.” Yes, I tell him, fair is fair.

I promise you, deep down she has unresolved feelings of contempt and disdain for the (that would be ‘her’) Guatemalan people, they just haven’t come out yet.  Stay tuned…