A bank far away wants confirmation that we live in Uruguay: an original utility bill with our names on it. Easy?

1

Utility companies in Uruguay will not allow two names on an account, even for a married couple.

No problem – put one bill in wife’s name.

2

Standard addresses outside of cities do not exist. Our house has no number, only a name – which we could change at will. Our street does not have a name – it has two, one of them a number. Some mail arrives addressed to our town; some to our section of the town. We receive mail with at least two different postal codes.

3

No two utility companies address their mail the same way. In fact, the water and electric bills have such different addresses that you would be nuts to assume they would arrive at the same place.

4

When I took three bills to the Post Office to ask how mail should be addressed, the postmistress looked at each in turn and said, yes, that’s correct, even though at least two bore no similarity. Had I pointed out that early in our stay, one of the bills arrived with handwritten notes from the PO telling the carrier where to deliver it, she no doubt would have replied, yes, but he knows where you are now.

5

Official property designations include numbers for padrón, manzana (yes, as in apple), and solar. Some of these numbers appear, in varying forms, on the bills. Some have no reference.

By now, you want to suggest, why don’t you ask one utility to modify their address? Well, chances are you haven’t tried to do that, and I wasn’t eager for an exercise in futility. But I did, in February, go to OSE, the water company and issuers of the most cryptic address, and to my amazement and delight the 20-something behind the desk said no problema and changed it, advising me that the new address would appear on our March bill.

6

It didn’t.

7

Returning to the same 20-something in April, he tells me it is not possible to change the billing address in the system. Had I pointed out that he himself claimed to have changed it six weeks before – sorry; not the best use of my time.

I photocopied the architect’s plans, in which he specifies every bit of data that could be used to identify the property, stuck it in an envelope with notations and the two bills, and mailed it off to far away.

Ya veremos. We will see.