Bakshishi....?

10.09.2010

This week I had to do several visits to the office for social welfare. It’s this office that issues our “operating license” which we still need to obtain. Again this was an extremely interesting experience and in my still European mindset I of course had the strange idea that there must be a website, authority or an official document that should list the requirements needed in order to obtain such a license.

I would like to spare you the long version of the story, but basically we spent 2 1/2 hours sitting in an office, discussing with 3 different persons. To each of them we had to explain the full story from the beginning and somehow all 3 of them started endless discussions – either they were too busy to help, not the right person or our documents were not sufficient – until finally we seemed to have the “mama” of the section, who told us that she is very very busy signing documents, but if we come back after two weeks, we would get our license. On our way back, Patrick told me that all of the other persons we spoke to, tried to find ways to get some “motivation” (–> money, bakshishi) from us to help…

Two remarkable things I found was that whatever office I was in, the walls were plastered with posters of campaigns against domestic violence and violence against children. And in most of the (very small) offices you could see 3-4 employees, but it was very difficult to try to figure out what their job or immediate task was, as literally nobody was what I would define as “working” – but either staring holes into the air, reading newspaper, or openly taking a nap…

Have a good weekend, so long

Tobias