whatever happened to chip and pin?

it's my second week in kigali and today I had to go and get money on my visa card. now, being swiss (banking heaven ;-)) and moving to england was a challenge in terms of banking - I had, until my 25th year, never owned a cheque book and received exactly 3 cheques in my entire life - in england you could buy chewing gum with cheques - weird! but england moved on from when I first got there and not too long ago introduced the revolutionary principle of chip and pin (again, I had never before had to sign when paying by card - chip and pin all the way ;-)) - well, now I could buy rizla with my card. well, here it's all cash, baby! there are a couple of atm's around but they don't work with foreign cards it appears - so anyway, back to my point: I needed money. so you go to the bank where there's a counter specifically for withdrawals on visa cards. you show your card and your passport - they enter your name and card number into a system - you sign about 3 pieces of paper - one of which is a cheque to yourself ;-)) with that cheque you then go to the tills in the front of the bank where it takes another 10 minutes to process the cheque and hand over the money. and guess what - the highest note I've seen is a fiver... 200 quid in five pound notes - makes me feel like I have a LOT of money (which I do for local standards) - apparently the write-a-cheque-to-yourself-system also applies for withdrawals from your personal account at the local bank here - strange.

On a similar note, shopping in the supermarket is also quite an experience: the actual getting your stuff is not that different from what we know, other than that apparently you never quite know what you're going to get as it depends on what containers have made it through with what merchandise. but the tilling system is well old school: they write it down on little receipt blocks with coal paper to make carbon copies; then you take both copies to a separate till where you physically pay; if you buy a lot you get more than one receipt and the lady at the money till has to add the two (or more) receipts up with the calculator - but you know what - it works!