Counting Kwacha

A dollar is 3,200 Zambian Kwacha. There are no coins, only bills. The old ones are made of paper but new ones are made of plastic or paper.

The smallest bills are 50 Kwacha. They have a zebra on them.
The next bill is 100. It has a buffalo.
The 500 bill has an elephant.
The 1000 bill has an aardvark.
The next bill is 5,000. It has a lion on it.
The 10,000 bill has a porcupine.
20,000 is next. It has a black lechwe (looks like an impala)
The 50,000 has a leopard.

There used to be a 20 Kwacha bill and also coins. The coins were called ngwee. (Note from mom: 100 ngwees = 1 Zambian Kwacha.. ”Ngwee” means “dawn” in the prominent local languages, Bemba and Nyanja. This is said to be in reference to the Zambian nationalist slogan: "new dawn of freedom".)

The newspaper costs 3,000 Kwacha. I have 14,000 Kwacha!

This is how it starts, a long time ago:

I kept asking daddy for little change and eventually I had 6,400 Kwacha --two dollars! Then, I decided to sell in my house. I got lots more money. I was selling a sleeping bag, two books and that’s it. I sold it to mommy and daddy! And that’s how I got 14,000zkw. I used to have three dollars and now I don’t know how much I have. I have three 1,000s, two 500s, and one 10,000 bill. I keep trading mommy for some bills. If I have one thousand more I will trade mommy for a lion bill! Maybe I will get it by selling the paper – again! Or, by doing EXTRA cleaning! Maybe every time I do something and I can get money? Mommy says this is called “getting an allowance.”

These are some things I could do to earn my allowance:

Cleaning up toys
Sweeping
Reading books with Finn
Bring laundry to the laundry room
Help with cooking
Bring the plates to the sink after dinner

By Owen

Owen created this book and his mom thought it would be nice to share it. We had a bit of a rocky transition into the Lusaka International Community School and this book was his big 'breakthrough.' He has a weekly spelling list but this particular list he took it upon himself to first write a sentence using each of the words; then, he deciced to write sentences that were all about cats so that he could put together a surprise for his little brother who loves cats. He did everything from figuring out how many pages he needed, how to organize his list of sentences, what pictures to draw with the sentences and the best part was figuring a way to make a book without staples or tape. He even did some editing on his own. It is one of our favorite storytime books. We hope you enjoy it, too!

I like Cats by Owen, illustrated by Owen

Cats need feet to walk. We know a cat with three legs.

We know a cat with no tail. She lives on our street in Seattle.

Cats like to sleep.

Cats need love! They are so sweet!

Cats creep at night. Creep! Creep! Creep!

Last week we saw a kitten! It was in Viv's pool house!

Sleep, creep, three, sweet, feet, need, week, street, live, put

Chaminuka Safari

We went to Chaminuka on a super super super bumpy, super super dusty road. Once we got there we went on a safari. We saw: hyenas, lions, giraffe, wart hogs, gazelle, ostriches, elephants, pukus, jacuna, and lots of other things. It was a two hour drive. Me and Finny super super extra extra extra liked it! Daddy didn’t come with us, he had to go on a meeting.

At the lodge, after we had tea, we saw leopard rugs! It was a real skin but the leopard wasn’t alive any more…it was just a rug. I would rather have seen a real leopard running around outside! (But I got to put my hand inside the leopard mouth!) At first I thought it was a cheetah but we looked it up and found out it was a leopard.

We saw three giraffes. I thought the neck of a giraffe was taller! I thought it was as tall as a tree but it was smaller. Once the hyenas dug under the fence and ate the oldest lion. I thought it might dig not where the lions are but where the people are and it might have eaten some people! But they just ate the lion. We couldn’t go in to see the lions because the lions were eating. We just saw one.

We saw a baby elephant! It was so cute. I think there are just three elephants there – we saw all of them. They were eating grass - or hay.

We saw goats on the road – LOTS of goats!

We saw ostriches, too. We saw TWELVE ostriches. Seven were running all together in the grass – and one was running by itself when we saw them. We just could see the tops of their heads – we could barely see their legs because the grass was SO tall. The grass was taller than daddy! When we were leaving and mommy was driving we saw four more. Two were just sitting on the road – then they stood up and walked off the road and we passed by. I was surprised that they were SO SO SO big! They have wings but they can’t fly! They can run and when they ran they were pretty fast. So fast I couldn't even get a good picture!

I took a photograph of mom and dad – it looks like a little elephant is crawling into daddy’s ear!