Typical Sakten women making telephone call

With her baby strapped on her back, Thinley Wangmo restlessly awaits her turn outside a telephone booth in Merak.
Inside the booth is a man whose frame fills up the room, horizontally and vertically, and who is rasping loudly on the phone, oblivious of the discomfort.
Thinley’s daughter breaks into a wail. Exasperated, she ask the lady behind her to keep her place and dashes out of the line to comfort her baby. Minutes later, she returns.
Thinley is next. She gives a torn paper, on which a number is hastily scrawled, to the booth’s supervisor, who dials the number and asks the person on the other end to call back.

Thinley speaks for about fifteen minutes to her husband, who is undergoing medical treatment in the Khaling basic health unit.

“I’m so relieved to know he is recovering,” says Thinley.

She wonders aloud how it would be without the telephone booth in Merak. People in the queue break into smiles.

The supervisor tells her it’s Nu 10. He looks at a register and informs her that she will have to clear her dues. Thinley gives him a blank look, as if to say, “Yeah, whatever,” and rushes out of the room.

When Merak got its telephone two years ago, it brought immense relief to the people who could, for the first time, keep in touch with near and dear ones far away. But with the joy, the phone also brought (financial) pain.

Calls are expensive here. For domestic calls, it’s Nu 10 a minute, instead of the normal Nu 3. Requesting the supervisor to phone a person at the other end to call back costs Nu 10 too.

Thinley Wangmo says that when it was initially installed, the cost did not matter because of the excitement. But these days, she says, phone calls were becoming increasingly expensive.

“Most make calls on credit and they take a long time to pay off,” said the supervisor Sangay Lhaden.

Sangay said it was difficult to track down credit defaulters, many of whom don’t return. “I have to keep enquiring about them.”

Merak gup Tshering said that the cost of telephone calls in Merak needs to be reduced. “Most are yak herders here,” he said.

The Merak phone system is powered by solar power from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. The Merak telecom office also has Internet facilities for the villagers, but only official visitors and their own staff know how to use it. Source: Kuenselonline