What should have taken minutes took days. But then again, we are in Indonesia, and things are never as straightforward as one would expect. Fortunately, the experience of buying a piece of property here may prove valuable in the future.
On the 24th of November, Kiky and I set out from Makassar with the intention to get the property that we had ben looking at. It is on a beach where no other people have established permanent structures, where electricity has not yet made it’s way down to the shoreline, and where our neighbours will be the seasonal algae farmers, fishermen, and boat builders. We had a meeting the next day with the property owner, a man named just Wahab. He was an elderly man, with few teeth left but a smile that took full advantage of the remaining ones. He had come across the sea from Balikpapan, where he resides as a boat builder there. Upon meeting him, I was happy that our money would be going to somebody who would value it.
Not all of our money would go directly to Wahab though. First of all there were the “real estate” agents. This team consisted of two people, Gappar and Sudirman. Gappar is a relative of Kiky and had worked hard to this point to ensure that everything worked out. Sudirman was related to Wahab, and was the one who let us know of the land. This team was surely making a profit on the land, but how much we had no idea.
Complications in the process arose first while trying to get the money from the bank. The nearest bank is in Bulukumba, an hour’s drive away. While the drive alone was time consuming, the bank made me question my patience. To withdraw from the same branch and transfer between accounts (both of which belonged to us and were in the same bank) took us almost two hours, which naturally made us late for our meeting to finalize the land agreement.
After getting in late, we were again delayed by the fact that there were no lights, making the printing of our agreement impossible. In the end, Kiky had to write it out by hand, which added a certain authenticity to the whole shebang. We did some last minute haggling, arguing over whether we would be paying for land in the green zone (a government owned fringe on every beach) or not. In the end, Kiky was able to make an agreement which ensured that we would pay for only what was on the certificate.
The whole process was interesting. I have never bought land anywhere, but I am fairly certain that buying land in Indonesia is a fair bit different from doing so in Canada. We are still waiting for the certificate to be completed, which is now in a stage where others can contest the land claim. Already some have stepped forward claiming ownership, a natural occurence in Indonesia, where many wills are still only by word of mouth. However, the prospect looks good considering we have already seen certificates from the government in Wahab’s name.
As convoluted as the process is, it has also been a good experience to know what goes into this type of dealing. In the future, we will be more prepared should we need to buy more land for Pajoka.
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