We stopped off to visit the supermarket – “Shopright” – so I could pick up some water, some cash (it’s amazing how helpless you feel when you have no money), and a SIM card so I make local calls without paying a million pound an hour. This Arthur warned, could take a while. Sadly he was right. We took a ticket and stood in a queue, which preceded to remain static for the next 25 minuted, which the screen randomly called out various different numbers with different preceding letters before them, it what seemed to be no logical order.
Ten minutes later, with Arthur feeling a little impatient, we decided to pick up the the water
From the supermarket, and then return to see what progress we had made. A few other random numbers had been called, but, assuming they were in some kind of word, our number was still rather far away. We needed to get the SIM card cut to the right size for my phone, so we popped over to a different branch of MTN, and decided to join the queue here instead, as the door man told it wouldn’t be too long and would be much quicker than the other store. So we sat down and 45 minuted later, still hadn’t moved.
The culture is very laid back here, which Arthur seems to struggle with more than me (a great exercise in patience, which he didn’t seem too pleased with when I told him!) after about an hour, a lady waved me over (still my ticket hadn’t been called), and agree to sort me out. She processed the paper work, in about 10 minutes and then helped me setup everything on the phone and add some credit onto the number. I was up and running! Arthur laughed when I told him in the UK all we had to do is walk into a shop and buy a SIM card, easy as 1, 2, 3.
