Why I hate Malagasy Banking

Friends, let me tell you a story about banking in the country of Madagascar. This story begins in April before KP’s dad came over with the rest of the FTC group and we needed to hire a car to take us from Tuléar to Fianar. We found one (it turned out to be a rolling Superfund site, but that’s another story) and to seal the deal I had to transfer money from my account into the account of the person renting us the car. I had never done a wire transfer before, but I went to my bank, was given a form to fill out, and le voilà. It was easy and quick. But, reader, I assure you it was a false sense of security because it was here that things went pear-shaped on the whole deal.

Fast forward to May and KP and I are balancing our account with the most recent statement. We’re reconciling the account and I see that my bank transferred about 30 bucks more to the car rental dude than supposed to. Okay, shit happens; it was probably an honest mistake. A quick trip to the bank should sort things out. Right. Wrong.

The next morning I go to the bank. With a false smile, I calmly explain to my bank what happened. They’re dubious. Could they have made a mistake like this? They tell me that I’ll have to come back in the afternoon so they can go back and cross-check the original transfer order. Okay, no problem. Afternoon arrives, and, what do you know? Golly, they made a mistake and transferred too much. Then the banker puts on a solemn face to tell me that it’s going to be up to me to contact car-rental dude and ask him to return the excess amount. I don’t know how he was able to tell me that with a straight face, but he did. No “I’m sorry we made a mistake, and because we value you as a customer and want to make things right, we’ll eat the cost and credit your account.” More like, “Yeah, we’re dumb-asses, but we’re going to make you spend your own valuable time cleaning up our mess.”

So now with the onus on me, I email car-rental dude and explain the situation. A week goes by with no response to my email. I call him and he doesn’t pick up. Now I’m pissed. Letter #2: I pull out the big guns and explain that if he doesn’t respond to me the next time he hears from me will be through my lawyer. (Thankfully, if there’s one thing in abundance in Fianar, it’s lawyers.) My bluff worked. Next day he responds and he says he’ll return the excess money.

It’s July now and I’ve been away for a month, but today I picked up my mail and looked at our bank statement. True to his word, car-dude paid the money. But here’s the kicker: the bank charged me a 10% on the transaction—for the mistake they made in the first place. This afternoon, somehow I calmly explained that I didn’t think I should have to pay this fee. In a span of 5 minutes I made it up two links in the chain of command before I had to explain my story for a third time to the bank manager. He was very sympathetic and understood perfectly my complaint. He explained the fee was automatically assessed when the transaction took place. He also explained to get my refund I was going to have to write a letter to regional director explaining why my bank should refund the transfer fee. Miraculously, he managed to do all this with a smile. Prick.

Thankfully, I’m getting off the island for a while and can shrug this off as just another one of the little quirks that make living in Madagascar such an adventure. It also demonstrates why the Millennium Challenge Account is working to reform the Malagasy banking system. Where the average time to process a transaction is 24 days, my problem seems insignificant in comparison. Still, a little customer service would have be nice.

The Tana Waterfront

The office where I'm working in Tana is part of a mini-mall, seductively called The Waterfront. From a positional perspective the name fits, but that’s about it. In water-body taxonomy, the water to which the mall fronts is closer to a swamp than anything else. Real estate developers must have thought this name was preferable to Mall de Moustique, which would have been more descriptive and truthful. In previous times the swamp was bigger, covering more area than it does today. Some of the land was initially drained during construction of the mall, and more was done later to create space to build one of Tana’s gated-communities. Upon entering the community you pass through a wrought-iron gate staffed with 24-hour security, then drive along a tree-lined avenue with speed bumps every 100 meters, and take in views of the “waterfront” before you reach the mall. At times you could think this was somewhere in the US.

Working in a mall setting has its pros and cons. There’s definitely a convenience factor, especially when it comes to food. No food court, but there is a bakery with yummy French patisserie treats; an up-market café serves fast and tasty plates of Middle Eastern food; and if you wanted to pick up some groceries for home, no problem—there’s a Shoprite, a South African grocery chain, on the first floor. And, if I were significantly wealthier than I am now, I could do more than window-shop at some of the other stores that populate the mall. A men’s clothing shop sells top fashion house labels, and even though this is the developing world, the prices aren’t. Aside from not being able to fulfill my capitalistic urges, there are other downs like more traffic and—the purpose of my post—having to put up with bad neighbors.

Let me explain. The CARE office is on the second floor directly above the Shoprite. And when I get to work at 7:30 there’s still another 2 hours before the grocery opens to the public. I settle in at my desk, collect my thoughts, and then start a musical odyssey provided free of charge courtesy of Shoprite. While Shoprite employees are preparing to open they enjoy using the central P.A. system play music. And, fitting of a store specializing in choices, the range of music that drifts into my office is impressive. It’s also a bit repetitive because a few days into my contract I detected a pattern to the music, a more-or-less fixed progression through different genres. Early morning hymns get things off to a soul-stirring start. I can’t understand the lyrics since they’re in Malagasy, but sometimes I catch a “Jesosy” or two. The second movement is a bit of Malagasy Classic Rock. Musically, this stuff sounds like Boston, Journey, and every other big guitar band from the ‘70s. Again, I can’t understand what they’re saying, but whatever it is, they’re feeling it. After a good hour of straight Malagasy, things move into US hair-band territory, with Bon Jovi and Guns & Roses taking top honors in the playlist. This pretty much rounds out and wraps up the morning show before Shoprite opens its doors and the music gets turned down to more neighborly levels. But, every so often the concert includes something truly special. One morning last week, for example, a Disney animated movie soundtrack medley played for about an hour. Beauty & The Beast, Little Mermaid, The Jungle Book, and much more: the hits just kept coming. Needless to say, the hours between 7:30 to 9:30 aren’t my most productive.

I think if this was the only thing going on in the morning I might be able to block it out, but in addition to the music there’s another distraction. My “office” is actually a room where the public computers to access the internet are located, so there’s usually a pretty constant stream of traffic of folks coming in and checking email, news, Hello Kitty fan-club sites, etc. Most interlopers are quick and polite, recognizing that someone (me) is trying to work. But there’s a young French woman doing a summer internship that has me one step from madness. Her routine is to show up around 8 and check email until 9, and she’s a public talker. While she checks her messages, she talks to the computer, or maybe she’s talking to whoever wrote the email, or maybe it’s to ghosts, leprechauns or yodas. I know she’s not talking to me, because the first day we met I heard her saying something and I responded, thinking she had addressed her comment to me. There was an awkward moment between us as I realized she hadn’t spoken to me: the only other sentient being the room. I tried to shrug it off thinking she’s young, perky, and has a cute French accent when talking to and laughing with the monitor, but it’s too distracting. Partly it’s weird, but I think an equal part is me feeling jealous she’s having so much fun talking with her email messages.