When I finally got into my new apartment this year, after a homeless month sleeping on the floors of various friends, my first task was to get a set of good, heavy locks for the burglar doors. This mission led me on a quintessentially Namibian adventure.
There were no locks to be had in my town, so I had to wait until the weekend to make the 60-mile journey to Oshakati. I went to Benz, a hardware store which had a large supply of locks. It’s an odd store. It’s huge -- easily the size of a small Kmart -- but at the front a small semi-circle of wooden counters corrals the customers, keeping us out of the shelves. Only by speaking to an employee can a customer go into the shelves and look at the stock, accompanied by store personnel to make sure we don’t shoplift. After I spoke to someone and acquired my saleswoman escort, we quickly found a large display of locks. Not sure which of two locks was the right size, I asked her if I could buy them both, and then simply return one of them when I was next in town, two weeks later. She said that would be no problem. I happily paid my money, and went home to try out my new purchases.
Two weeks later, as promised, I was back in Oshakati to return the lock that I didn’t use. Approaching the counters, with my lock and my receipt in hand, I explained to a salesman that I needed to return the lock that I hadn’t used. “That’s no problem,” he said. “We can refund your money, and we only take a 15% restocking fee.”
“But when I bought these two weeks ago,” I replied, “I specifically asked the saleswoman if I could return them. She said yes, it would be no problem.”
“That’s right sir, it is no problem. We only are charging you 15% for restocking. No problem,” the salesman responded.
Trying to keep my voice dispassionate, I said, “Actually, it is a problem. I specifically asked if I could get my money back, and the saleswoman told me that I could.”
The salesman asked innocently, “Who did you speak to?” When I said I didn’t know her name, he looked around behind him, opening his arms wide to take in the entire store. “Well, where is she?” When I told him that I didn’t see her, he seemed to think that he had won the argument. But I persisted, and after five more minutes of arguing, finally the manager came over to smooth things out.
“Our policy is that we charge 15% for any items that are returned,“ the manager explained, “But I will try to help you out. How about we only charge you 10%?” When I refused, the manager dropped his offer to 8%, but then held firm there. He seemed to think that he was being extraordinarily generous to just offer that.
I had one more trick up my sleeve, but to explain requires a little digression into the state of the Namibian media. There are several country-wide newspapers. The most popular is The Namibian, an independent daily paper which criticized the South African-led government during the 1980s. At that time, it was a newspaper that Swapo, the rebel group, supported. Since then, as Swapo has come into power, the newspaper has remained stubbornly independent, and now Swapo blacklists it. Nonetheless, it is by far the most commonly read newspaper and has become the country’s ‘Newspaper of Record.’ It is just as likely to criticize as to praise the government, not caring whether the leaders are black or white. I love the Namibian.
At the end of 2007, the Namibian introduced a new section of text messages sent in by readers. It’s the same concept as writing a letter to the editor, except it has proven far more popular. People sound off about all sorts of problems. It’s not uncommon for a villager to send a text message about how his town councillor hasn’t been able to get water to the community, or from an angry parent if a child’s teacher has been lazy. One of my good friends even had her text message make it into the “SMS of the Day” section, warning Namibian women in a particular community to avoid certain unsavory men at a local bar.
So, I figured that if it was good enough for Namibians, it was certainly good enough for me. “Well, if you‘re not going to give me the full refund that your employee promised me, then I guess there‘s nothing else I can do.” I sighed, feigning a typical fatalism. Then, I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. “I suppose that I will just have to write an SMS to the Namibian to warn people about your business practices.” I started to compose the text message right there in the store. After I finished the first sentence or two, I showed it to the manager, and he quickly decided that he could find a way to give me the full refund after all!
Of course, the story doesn’t end quite there. After the manager Ok’ed giving me the discount, the employee who tried to process it actually gave me too much money back! It seemed the price of the lock had gone up in the past two weeks, and their system automatically refunded the current price, not the actual price. I pointed this out to the employee, and it took another consultation with the manager before the problem could be resolved.
Despite the long argument, everyone left smiling. It was, in many ways, quintessentially Namibian: embracing technology but not getting it quite right, inefficient and gracious, frustrating and rewarding. That’s Namibia.
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