(Photos: A picture of our unreliable bank; Grace running around under the palm trees on our day off)
Things often take longer than you think they should. This is especially true in our experience in Africa. You have to prepare yourself for the possibility that your quick errand could turn into a long ordeal.
Our island hopes to build up a tourism industry, but one of the major stumbling blocks is money. Getting money should be easy. You hop over to the ATM when you are running low and withdraw some cash from your account. As you may have guessed, it is not that easy here. They don’t have any international ATM’s here. You might think they have one. If you drive near the big bank in the capital you see the sign for ATM and all the symbols for the international banking networks, but as you get closer you will see the symbols have been crossed out and that only people with local bank accounts can use them. This really becomes problematic because this is not a credit card culture. No one accepts credit cards on the islands. Everything has to be done in cash.
So how do we get money? Up until now all the foreigners have relied on a single office that allows you to take out money using a VISA debit card. This has never been a reliable system. It depends on network or telephone lines to a neighboring country that in turn communicates to banks in Europe. Most times it takes more than one try to connect and it is not uncommon to be turned away after three attempts and to be told to come back another day. It is such a pain that we usually only get money once a month.
Recently things have hit an all-time low. It started with one teammate failing multiple times to get money. We lent our teammate the necessary funds to survive and trusted the lines would be better in the coming weeks. Then the office started turning people away saying the machine was broken. Now it has been weeks since anyone has been able to get money. Slowly as a team we have run out of money. We still go back to the office periodically, but they say that the problem is in the neighboring country and they don’t know when it will be fixed.
Don’t worry, we’ll survive. Western Union and similar companies exist on the island and everyone on the team is looking into having money sent. Eventually the lines will be fixed and the system will be back to its old unreliability. There are also rumors one of the banks getting an international ATM soon, so we will see. For now we pray and trust and keep track of our coins.
PRAYERS ANSWERED
Megan is about 35 weeks pregnant and doing well. We should pick up our passports with renewed visas in the next couple days. The teachers are in negotiations with the government and so far there have not been any more disturbances or demonstrations. We have had some cooler days this week.
PRAYERS REQUESTED
We leave for South Africa in the coming week (Thurs, Feb 25)!! Pray for our goodbyes, our travels and our time in SA awaiting the arrival of our baby boy. The monthly leadership seminar is happening on Saturday, pray for good attendance, fellowship and study. Pray that the money issue would be resolved soon and that we could set-up better back-up systems for getting money in the future.
