The Bank with no money
When I first came to Kyrgyzstan back in the 1990′s I was taken to see Lake Issyk Kul by one of my acquaintances, a lawyer. As we drove along the tree lined avenues between the mountains rising to the left and the lake itself stretching out on our right, he pointed out some fields and told me that when he was a student he was sent by his University to the collective farm in the local village to help with the harvest.
Apparently it was common in those days for students to be sent on “selhoz rabota” … some were sent to farms … others were sent to other “worthwhile projects”. It wasn’t exactly an Internship, (the same as “Practica”, or Work Experience) because it was not really connected with their course of studies or career plans – remember he was a lawyer not an agriculturist. I’m told that some students resented this distraction from their studies but that there were also others that welcomed it as a way to get away from their normal, everyday, lives and a way of gaining valuable experience of the wider world. I suppose this the Soviet system, the student body provided a source of cheap labour, and it was also seen as providing a form of service by which they could make a constructive contribution to society.
Anyway, when I told him about my holiday job as a student was as a barman, he was extremely amused. The idea of Oxford University sending me off to be barman must have seemed a very strange concept, (and a student of Theology at that!).
(Although Kyrgyz students are no longer sent off to help with the harvest, many courses do involve internships. We take a number in our company for a period of “practica” or work experience both in our hotels and in the tour department. Also, many students also join the Voen-kafedra … military classes, a form of Officer Training Course, which exempts them from having to perform military service once they have graduated.)
I was reminded of this incident by something that occurred this past week and which brought to mind old joke about “a pub with no beer.”
Actually, it’s not just a joke … it’s a song …”A pub with no beer” was the first Australian record to “go gold” … to sell over a million copies … a humorous folk song from the second World War which was based on an earlier poem:
Well, the publican’s anxious for the quota to come,
There’s a faraway look on the face of the bum,
The maid’s gone all cranky and the cook’s acting queer -
What a terrible place is a pub with no beer!
Chorus:
Oh, it’s lonesome away from your kindred and all
Round a campfire at night, where the wild dingoes call
But there’s nothing so lonesome, so morbid or drear
As to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer
The stockman rides in with his dry, dusty throat,
Goes up to the bar, pulls a wad from his coat,
But the smile on his face quickly turns to a sneer
When the barman says suddenly, “The pub’s got no beer!”
There’s a dog on the verandah, for his master he waits,
But the boss is inside, drinking wine with his mates,
He hurries for cover and he cringes in fear,
It’s no place for a dog, not a pub with no beer!
Then in comes the swagman, all covered with flies,
He throws down his roll, wipes the sweat from his eyes,
But when he is told he says, “What’s this I hear?
I’ve trudged fifty flaming miles to a pub with no beer!”
Oh, pity the blacksmith – first time in his life
He’s gone home cold sober to his darling wife
He walks in the kitchen; she says, “You’re early, my dear,”
Then he breaks down and he tells her that the pub’s got no beer.
(There is also a famous version of it by the Irish folk band, the Dubliners.)
The incident that brought all this to mind wasn’t, however, a case of “a pub with no beer”, but of “a Bank with no money”.
To be fair, it wasn’t exactly a case that the bank had no money … what happened was this:
I had gone to the local branch of one the our banks that we use to withdraw some money from our account in order to pay salaries and as usual we had the cheque validated, which involves me signing five times … three times on the cheque itself and twice more on the stub in the cheque book. The clerk checked to make sure that there are sufficient funds in the account – there were, and so we were then sent downstairs to the Cashier to collect our money. The cashier looked a little worried as we approached … and timidly asked how we wanted the money – in US Dollars or in local currency, the som. As I said, the cash was needed in order to pay salaries, so we needed som … her face fell when we told her … she looked distraught … “We don’t have it, we don’t have enough in som … we are waiting for a delivery.”
Fortunately, they had plenty of US Dollars … nice, crisp, new notes … so we took that. As there are plenty of exchange offices and banks in Bishkek, it was no big deal in changing the money.
So it wasn’t really a case that they had “no money”, just that the cashier in that particular branch didn’t have enough local currency at that particular time … and, as it happens, we did quite well out of it because we got a good rate of exchange when it came to changing the money into som later in the day.
Still, I found it funny at the time … and made a joke about it, … and to her credit, she smiled.
Bishkek