Phone calls in Africa often just end. No goodbye, no call you later. Sometimes even mid sentence, the conversation is suddenly over. The underdeveloped social side of me secretly loves this. No need to figure out how to wrap things up or bring an end to a stalled conversation. It's over, just like that. No need to apologize. The caller on the other end probably understands you have just run out of credit. He or she might call you back, depending on their credit situation. Otherwise it is understood you'll catch up later.
Unfinished phone calls used to stress me out, until I realized the other caller understood, had probably found him or herself in the same situation at one time or another, out of credit and not really able to run out and get more just then. Overall, I prefer this system of buying credit in units of your choice, or your budget's choice, rather than the contracts and monthly payments. No surprises. You pay in advance. And many companies offer emergency codes that will supply you with credit in SOS situations. There are codes to share credit with a friend and a variety of other services designed to help the user. It's a fairly friendly system.
Except for the occasional dropped call. Lately I am feeling as though my posts have run out of credit. I get near the end, where I would normally like to tie things up all neatly, and simply click publish. Dropped call. Some of my ideas don't even make it that far. They're still stuck in draft mode. Like a call that can't get through. Abidjan does seem to have that fault in the service. Some days calls, national or international, just don't seem to get through. While I haven't any ideas about how to repair the issue, I do have some ideas about what's causing my own difficulties. It's most likely due to some of those "recent events" I have mentioned, or some other ones I have not mentioned. Either way, these last few weeks, and probably the next few to come, have simply found me out of credit.
