Sunday, June 15, 2008

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

1 comment:

Teresa said...

Hi Owen!
I wish I had all this information about Zambian money when I was showing the Zambian money to the class. It sure is colorful! Are you still in school?
Mrs. Goethe