Currency and 3.2 Trillion Dollar Beer

This morning started out with a bang (or maybe a coo?)... as I was waking up - half awake but still in bed - in flew a pigeon. It just sat there on the counter where it had landed within arms reach of me for about 5 seconds as I lay there paralyzed out of fear (just kidding), then it left again. I told the manager but it was no big deal to her, like apparently it had happened before. I mean, it wasn't upsetting to me, but I was highly amused by the whole occurrence. haha.

I made my way down Kloof Street today, a more residential area than Long Street where I'm staying. There's a grocery store down that way that I found rather small, but I guess it's a pretty standard size in Europe and here. My first real grocery shopping experience here was interesting. Different brands, sizes, measurements, and products. Plus sales tax (VAT) here is 14%, even on food. My hostelmates and I guessed it's hardly (if any cheaper) to buy your own groceries and cook for yourself than it is to eat out. That's significant in that it's a reflection of how well the foodservice industry pays here.

Last night speaking to one of the managers at the hostel, I was wondering what a pretty standard low-paying job here earns in wages. Not really thinking of the US equivalent before I spoke, I threw out the guess "10 Rand per hour?" but immediately after saying that I realized I was asking if they were earning $1.50/hr, so I was going to revise my guess, but the manager told me that's about right. Wow. Things here are a bit cheaper than in the US, but not significantly, and especially not proportionally in relation to our wages. I mean, a cheaper meal here is about $5-6, which is about what you'd pay in the US. But many of these people would have to work at least 4 hours to pay for a cheaper meal at a restaurant here. That's just crazy.

The desk at the hostel is decorated kinda funky. One of their main decors is bills and coins from all over the world, donated, I'm sure, by their guests who come all over the world. Bills and coins are taped/glued over the ceiling, walls, etc. The manager showed me a new bill they had gotten from Ray, who is a hostel regular. (Ray is a cameraman and does work for the hostel when he stays there. He's really cool, laid-back guy. I guess he has a residence in Milnerton that he goes to every few days, but since it's a long drive and he's on a motorbike, he just stays here in Cape Town most nights.) Anyway, he travels far and near for his camerawork and was recently in Zimbabwe. He gave Kevin (the bar manager) a Zimbabwean bill to put up in the desk area. When Kevin showed it to me last night, I thought it was fake. It was a 50bn (that's BILLION) note. Like in the US, you know how we have those fake $1 million dollar bills? I thought it was something like that. But no, this bill is actually for 50 billion Zimbabwean dollars. And it's worth nothing there. A single cheap beer is 3.4 TRILLION dollars. At that point, I have to wonder, why not make a unit of currency of much greater value? Instead of charging things in the trillions, it seems it would be a lot easier to make one unit of currency a much smaller numeral, if that makes any sense. The other thing is that a beer there is something like $20 USD if I understood Kevin correctly. Basically, the whole of Zimbabwe is in such turmoil that things are ridiculously expensive and the currency exchange rate is out of control. In 2008 the current inflation rate is 9 million percent! In a 2.5 week span the Zimbabwean government created several new, much greater denominations of bills. For more information on Zimbabwean hyperinflation, check out the Wikipedia page.)

Really, this is just an example of things I never expected to learn on this trip. I had heard bits and pieces of the problems in Zimbabwe but didn't know much about it at all. Not only am I learning by doing my research, I'm learning from the managers and the other guests at the hostel, and about all kinds of things, not just urban planning or architecture.