aripeskoe
(living in ghana)
28 June 2007
Money money money
On July 1, the government will introduce a new currency, sort of.
The currency now in use is called the Cedi, and it comes in various coins ranging in value from 50 to 500 and bills ranging from 1,000 to 20,000. Because of super-inflation of years past, the current exchange rate is about 9,300 cedis to the dollar. For potential foreign investors, this exchange rate apparently does not inspire confidence. What sort of economy would maintain a currency at an exchange rate of 10,000 to 1? Also, according to the government, its budget is now in the trillions, a number so large that computers (I've actually heard this argument) can not handle the calculations (I think what they're really saying is they have no idea how to use Microsoft Excel...Format-Cell-Use comma separator!!).
It is also a hassle to buy anything of value. For example, given that the most valuable bill is worth two dollars, one may need hundreds of bills to purchase, say, a refrigerator or a television. And when I go to an ATM, my $90 withdrawal (the max at any machine) may come out as forty or eighty bills. It's a bit much for my wallet.
So the government (technically the independent national bank) has decided to "re-denominate" the cedi by chopping off 4 zeroes. In other words, 10,000 cedis is now 1 Ghana Cedi. It insists, to the point of it becoming a national joke, that this is not a revaluation, but a re-denomination. Tons of money has been spent on public education campaigns to hammer home this point. The value is the same. The value is the same. The value is the same. Every Ghanaian has heard this slogan, but ask someone the difference between a redenomination and a revaluation and you'll get a blank stare.
(OK, I haven't actually asked a random person this question, but my sense is that the information awareness campaigns have overused the meaningless word re-denomination. The real message is, "don't worry, we're not stealing your money. Even though you had 10,000 cedis and now you have only 1, it's worth the same and we're not pocketing any of it.")
The "new" currency will come in bills worth 1, 5, 10, 20, and 50 Ghana Cedis. There will also be pesawas worth 1, 5, 10, 20, and 50 (100 pesawas = 1 Ghana Cedi). A Ghana Cedi will be worth a few cents more than a dollar. In theory, the old cedi and the new Ghana Cedi will exist together until the end of the year.
For the wealthy, which I imagine represent a tiny fraction of Ghanaians, it will be convenient to have a bill worth more than 2 dollars. This redenomination may also give potential investors more confidence in the country's prospects, and the government's computers won't be blowing quite as many vacuum tubes with the smaller numbers in the budget.
But most Ghanaians are not wealthy. In fact, they are poor farmers or small-time traders and are not regularly involved in transactions worth more than a few dollars. I don't have statistics to back this up, but I would guess that millions of people go weeks or even months without spending more than $5 in a single day. This group of the population is essentially being transferred to a coin-based economy.
People's daily needs, such as food, soap, and other commonly bought items usually cost less than a dollar, or one Ghana Cedi. These people have no need for a 5, 10, 20 or 50 Cedi bill, and, in fact, if they were to use one, the small-time rural traders they are buying from probably will not have change. There are only a few places in my town where I will even try using a 20,000 ($2) bill, so I won't even bother with a 5 Ghana Cedi ($5) bill. Paying for something in my town with 10 Ghana Cedis ($10) would be like buying a newspaper on the street with a $100 bill.
People like me live in both the wealthy, urban Ghana and the rural, poor Ghana. I use ATMs and occasionally travel to Accra and other places, but I also buy vegetables from the market in my town and fish from the 10 year old girl who walks by my house with a tray of it on her head. I'm part of Ghana's "middle class." We are totally screwed.
In my town, I'm in the same boat as the poor when it comes to the currency I can use. I will have to use coins and 1 Ghana Cedi bills. There just won't be change for anything larger. But when I go to the ATM to withdraw my Peace Corps money, I suspect it won't be spitting out 1's. So I will either have to wait 2 hours in line at the bank and ask for a giant stack of singles, thereby making the new currency no more convenient than the old, or somehow convert whatever the ATM gives me to a more usable form. The new, larger bills will not benefit me at all.
Also, I hate coins. I lose them, I can't keep them in my wallet, and they make noise when I walk. In the US I could collect them and bring them to a coin-counting machine at Commerce Bank. In Ghana I collected them guilt-free knowing that in total I probably had all of $6 idling in my room.
But now coins mean something. You'd be surprised how much Chinese manufactured soap you can buy with 50 pesawas (50 cents). Or with 50 pesawas I could buy 10 fresh oranges (although I could probably bargain for 12), or one really big delicious pineapple, or so many bananas that I won't poop for a week (although I suspect my banana lady is giving me a good deal because she thinks it will inspire me to take her to America).
The redenomination also has the potential to cause mass confusion, and I suspect that some people will try and capitalize on it by raising prices. Chopping off four zeroes is not so easy, especially when there are decimals involved. Using scientific notation makes the calculation a lot simpler, and I really think the government has missed an opportunity to teach the general population about exponents. But because this is about people's money, and what could be more important, I think people will get it pretty quickly...
¶ 2:35 PM 0 comments
22 June 2007
This Thing
Sometimes Ghanaians can't think of the disting that they're trying to say. English is at best a second disting for them, so it's understandable when they occasionally forget a word.
But at times it gets out of disting. The student I live with is a repeat disting. When he's talking in English, it often seems that he can't think of every other word in a disting. He often speaks with a bit of disting, so you can tell he's trying to think of the right word but just can't. Other people use it seamlessly without any disting, as if nothing is wrong.
Recently in a class of first-year students, I had the class change the disting in a Microsoft Word document. Only one student was able to do it, so I asked him to stand up and explain what he did to the rest of the disting. He said, and I quote, "I clicked on the disting." I asked him how he could just "disting" the most important word in the sentence, especially when it was not obvious to the rest of the class what he was talking about! Such is disting.
Teachers at my disting have similar problems. Some of them speak fluently, but there are a few whose disting is so broken that I wonder if they're having a positive influence on the students. Some of them also talk Pidgin disting, which I find difficult to understand. But I think they only use it when they talk among themselves, so it's not too disting.
This linguistic disting is consistent across large parts of the country. I've heard disting used in multiple regions of Ghana, and I wonder if it has spread to other countries. Maybe it's a West Africa disting.
I've started to occasionally use disting as well. For example, I wrote this in my computer lab and then saved it to my disting. Then I took it to the Internet café and I'm now posting it on my disting. It's a catchy word, and it applies to so many distings…
Addendum #1: Ghana struck oil! A few days ago the government announced that a delicious oil reserve was discovered off the coast. They have not officially announced how big it is, but I've heard numbers ranging from 300 to 600 million barrels. Ghana now becomes part of an exclusive African club that includes Nigeria, Angola, Libya, Guinea, and Sudan, although I think Ghana has less oil than any of those countries (certainly far less than nearby Nigeria which produces 2.5 million barrels a day). In theory, oil could be a real boon to the economy and do a lot to alleviate poverty….in theory.
Addendum #2: I posted a few new pictures. Why not look at them?
Addendum #3: I don't have any big plans for my 6-week break because I'm planning on taking the LSATs in September, so I want to study for that. There is a park in the north of the country that has elephants, hippos, baboons, and other animals, but apparently it's best to go in the dry season, which is what you might call the "winter." I also hope to see the Sahara at some point in the next year.
¶ 1:05 PM 1 comments
13 June 2007
One Year in FantasyLand
On June 9 at about 7:30 PM I hit my one-year mark in Ghana. That's one full calendar year. 12 months. 365 days. Nearly 4% of my life. Since Peace Corps is technically a 27-month commitment (although easily reducible to 26 for the well-behaved), I won't hit the halfway point until some day in July. Nonetheless, it's all down hill from here, hopefully the coasting and not the depressing kind of downhill.
Last week I was sick for a few days with what I could only assume was malaria, typhoid fever, or some other tropical disease. People here get malaria all the time, or at least they assume they have it (use more blood tonic – it cleans "dirty blood"). And a friend's neighbor recently claimed to have typhoid. These things happen. Turns out, I had a mild cold and I was cured in two days, but that doesn't change the fact that it could have been dengue fever or sleeping sickness, among others.
But, in a little over a year, or about 432 days, I plan on being back in the US and won't have to consult a book titled "Where There Is No Doctor" every time I sneeze (that I know that number has more to do with the fact that I have a lot of free time in a computer lab than anything else, and I almost never sneeze here). And I'm quite certain that won't be the only thing that changes once I get back to the US.
But I'll go and Ghana will stay. Though it and everyone I know here will continue to exist, it will only survive somewhere in the back of mind. (It's fun to think about how far in the back it will go.) But leaving is still a long way away. A lot could happen between now and then. I could even sign up for a third year…
Addendum #1: For the first time, I heard a Ghanaian make fun of Bush. It was great. A morning show on one of the country's big radio stations had a segment of stupid Bush quotes. After the segment, the host moved on to a news item about a man being suffocated to death by elephant poop. This show is a keeper.
Addendum #2: The rainy season is in full effect, and it's one of the best things that's happened since I got here. It's now normally cloudy, and it's rarely unbearably hot. And, true to the name, it rains several times a week, sometimes multiple times in a single day. This wonderfulness should last until August or September, and then it's back to hellish unless some side-effect of global climate change kicks in to make it somehow different.
Addendum #3: Another term is nearly finished. I think there will only be 4 more weeks of teaching followed by exams. The coming break is 6 weeks long. 6 weeks!
¶ 2:51 PM 1 comments