Administrative tasks and functions that bought us such things as the ink jet printer and newspaper bills may contribute in keeping the world going round but they don’t just disappear when living in a developing country.
My life living in a
big city was quite simple, I attempted not to get too caught up with annoying
life admin tasks or duties and no more so than those with regard to telecommunications and financial "stuff".
Keeping the dept collector away, the fridge full or the power going
wasn’t too challenging or consuming, here, getting enough food to have a full
fridge can take a day with all the stopping and starting at the road side
sellers or a trip to the west end of the atoll to the supermarket. However,
it’s a recent trip to the bank that takes the cake for administrative process,
entertainment and
"what the f…" moments.
There is one
flavour of bank here, it has Australia in it’s name but is a different
“product” the one we know back home ! The one brand bank has two branches and four
ATMs on the atoll. These provide a banking service to almost 50,000
people, the government and the vast number of global aid providers that are
here. Credit card facilities and internet banking haven’t made it here yet so
it’s pretty much a cash and coconut system.
Kiribati became independent in 1979
but has yet to produce it’s own currency, Australia is a major aid supplier
hence it runs under this dollar and the link to the bank with 3 letters.
Well used coins and a $2 Kiribati coin celebrating 10 years of Independence in 1989
A trip to the bank
is normally a planned and considered adventure, the most recent trip was in
response to my landlady asking to have the rent paid in advance. I may be
paying more rent here for a small besser brick house on the most densely
populated piece of land in the world than I paid in a “fashionable” Sydney
suburb but OK I can do this for her. What I wasn’t expecting was to take 2
steps inside the bank door and not be able to move. It’s about one on a
Thursday afternoon and I joined the other 100 or so people also attempting
mostly simple transactions and as I breathed in and tried to assess the
situation I found I had gate crashed a queue. Using my best ski lift shuffle
and an I-matang look of bewilderment I joined the rush hour and hoped it would
take me to the right counter before sunset.
Just about to make it to premuim front row seating
When I first
arrived in Kiribati the bank had the simple system of collecting a number and
waiting to be served in order, simple, logical, civilized and appeared to work.
One could take a guess at how long before your number would come up and go off
doing other chores and come back. I’d like to know what high earning consultant
flew in and came up with this new “efficient” system or “customer service”
strategy, I bet they never actually did any banking here.
Waiting is good for
the mind right ? It’s a good teacher of patience huh.
“Patience is not
about how long someone can wait,
but how well they behave while waiting”
I found this quote
recently and it’s got me into observation mode, 2 hours waiting in a bank
provided much fodder to chew on. Starting with my own patch it seemed to take
me half an hour to stop shaking my head and loosen that grip of disbelief. Next
it was counting and number crunching, the number of people waiting in the queue
in front of me (31), behind me (25) another queue (45, and hoping I wasn’t
suppose to be in that one !), and
a personal favourite the number of people wearing shoes (this is a vox pop that
I have taken up, reckon it’s about 45% sole less, or I should say thong less).
My maths has me
aiming to get served within 2 hours (almost correct) and 20 minutes until I
graduate from shuffling to a seat. The prize of scoring a seat comes with
having to move along one as each person gets served and has my bottom (and
everyone else’s) gracing all 27 seats !
More people waiting to get inside the bank
I depart the bank
alive and intact and battle through the queue of people still trying to get
into the officially closed bank. Maybe like me they don’t wear a watch and
apart from the bank closing time and the two flights to the big land this place
feels like it ticks to it’s own timepiece.
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