I wrote once before that I saw no corruption in Samoa – just good people doing their jobs. I was wrong. What is called nepotism, bribery and corruption in the Western world are the way of life here.
As I’ve said in previous posts, the difficulty with using broad labels is that you can ping good people along with the bad. I’ve lost count however with the number of people who have advised me to slip a few “pingers” into the palm of officials and they will “make things happen” for me.
I’ll start with a non-financial example of the way things are done over here. Electricity.
Power cuts in Samoa are constant. Every week there would be two or more cuts of varying duration. People complain but there’s nothing they can do about it. “Bad though it is, it’s just the way things are” seems to be the general sentiment.
One of the boys on the job this week spoke about it like this when we had yet ANOTHER power cut and no water for the whole day. In Pidgeon English he said something like this:
“Let me tell you about Samoa. I was born here. You are new here and I will teach you how things work. The reason that we are getting power cuts is that nobody from EPC lives in this area. [EPC is the power company].
I worked for EPC when I left school and I know what happens. If someone we knew at EPC lived in the area we would be careful not to switch off the transformer, otherwise we would just flick the switch and not care. Streets where an EPC official live never have power cuts. We made sure of that.
So if you want something done in Samoa you go to someone who you know and slip them some money. They will get things done – trust me in that. It is the way that Samoa works. If you don’t then it’s like your job becomes [hand signals paper screwed up and thrown in the bin] – it will be like you never had a job in the first place. Trust me in that!
The Tala talks and this is always the way over here – get to know someone in the place you want action, slip them some notes and things get done.
I was standing in the Immigration department a while back under a sign that said something along the lines of “Staff are not permitted to receive gifts”. It seems like the authorities may be recognising that a problem exists? The sign is ignored. As I watched, a person walked up to the counter, reached past me with a quick simple and obvious handover passed money to a counter worker and walked away. They would have received superior service and very likely a positive outcome.
The Tala talks!
I have a friend who told me about importing and how things work at customs. “I have a mate who has a mate . . .” the conversation started. Valuing things at say 20% of market value to save duty is good business for all – except the government coffers – and noone seems to bother much about government coffers. Many say it all goes to the crooked ones at the top anyway! A few hundred Tala in bribes can potentially save gazillions in duty. Who wouldn’t arrange things for themselves like this? BTW, this causes a real ethical issue for a Christian businessman who has the opportunity to go with the flow but participate in defrauding the government! One questions the justice in the honest ones paying 5x the duty of others.
Hmmm. An ethical challenge all right but still, the Tala talks!
A lawyer I was talking to didn’t like his chances in a court case where he was defending. I’d asked him how the case went after a good week or more in court every day. The matter of the legal strength of his case didn’t enter the picture – his reply indicated that things outside of the case would affect the way it went rather than the actual facts. Not good.
I’m sure that the Tala talks in this case too!
A recent trouble with getting the authorities to act properly for me engineered a response from a wise old Samoan man. Your trouble is that you didn’t [indicates greasing the palm with some money]. “When on earth is this money thing going to die?” I think to myself. And then I think about the relaxed Samoan lifestyle compared to the enormously busy Palagi one where people race around killing themselves to make more money and get more things and realise that it’s all the same, this money thing – just manifesting itself in different cultures.
Nepotism, the act of looking after ones’ own is the default setting in Samoa. It is variously explained to me as Fa’a Samoa, our culture, something to be proud about, just the way things are here.
Turning this into Western thinking though it’s just bribery and corruption. I know that any country in the world has people who use their wealth to gain benefit for themselves. In Samoa it is a little less subtle than many of the Palagi cultures. It’s rather in-your-face when you get down to doing business here actually.
As my mate said to me about it all . . . “It’s simple really. In Samoa the Tala talks!”
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