Shades of Gray

Corruption is rampant in Malawi as it is in most African nations. From a personal standpoint I feel like it is really important to not contribute to the corruption - because as Christians we need to honor the Lord and as expats that are here to help "fix" the situation and who are constatly horrified by the corruption we certainly don't need to contribute to it. Sounds pretty simple, I mean, after all, its pretty black and white. Or so I thought! I have two different sets of observations on the matter. 1) I have been pretty humbled to see how easily I am tempted to do things that aren't quite right because it is to my advantage, easy and "everyone else is doing it" 2) There are more shades of gray than I can even begin to describe! Here are just a few examples:

• When we bought our car last year we were told it was a 1999 but then one of the forms said 1997. And no where in the car could we initially find a year! We suspect that it is a 1997 but there are import issues that make it easier to bring in and register/inspect cars that are less than 10 years old...
• Taxes are really high here (sales tax is 17.5%) so basically, no one charges it. If you go to pretty much any of the Asian owned shops (which is the majority of shops) they don't actually give you a receipt. They use an adding machine to get your tally and write it on a scrap of paper. How they cook their books at the end of the month/year to justify no sales is a mystery to me....
• Everyone has household staff and the employer is technically required to withhold income tax from their salaries. Yet no one does. I've recently discovered that if income is less than 6,000 kwacha ($42) a month you do not have to pay taxes so some people are technically legal because they pay their staff poorly and then add on things like food, transport, and housing allowances etc (thought the topic of allowances in Malawi is a whole other nightmare for future discussion).
• A large number of businesses (run by expats and malawians) operate totally under the table - the owner may or may not have a work permit and they certainly aren't paying any taxes. It is a bit of a vicious cycle - it is so much hassle to attemp to do it legally so people just don't bother. But maybe if everyone actually paid taxes the government wouldn't have to tax so high?!
• For a little bit of money and knowing the right person you can expedite almost any paperwork you might need to have done such as car inspections etc, etc. Depending on what you want/need this procedure can fall into the clearly not legit category or much more gray!

So let me just wrap up by telling you about my morning yesterday. It started by exchanging money with a friend. He needs some U.S. dollars and I needed some kwacha so we made a mutually beneficial trade. He is using company kwacha to collect company dollars to buy things for the company in the U.S. He will not mismanage the money and the company benefits by being able to buy more, better quality items from the U.S. to help their business... Then I went to a very nice shop in town to buy gifts to take to the UK tomorrow. I know the owner so he sometimes gives me an unsolicited "discount". Then I went to the travel agent to check on some issues inclduign the fact that the charge for our tickets to London has still not showed up on my credit card bill... despite that I "paid" for it a month ago. She thinks it will show up in the next few days but recommended I just wait till we get back to pursue it further! and this is getting long so I will save the story of the electricty bill for a different post!