Monday, May 11, 2009

Exact change

Since we've been in the 21st-century city of Lusaka, I've spent a crazy amount of time at grocery stores, stocking up on food that isn't available in Chipata and is too liquidy or heavy or fragile to mail. Like cheese-stuffed tortellini, olive oil, balsalmic vinegar, tahini, two huge sacks of garbanzo beans. And more. Much, much more.

At Shoprite they even have barbeque-flavored (but not plain, oddly) Fritos. One afternoon I came home and found Trevor sprawled on the bed with red powder around his lips. He had eaten an entire sack.

I paid with exact change for what may be the first time ever. This is a feat because the smallest bill here is a 50-kwacha note, and since prices invariably end in odd tens I usually don't even bother trying to count out the small bills. This is part of the reason our friends find a lot of 50-kwacha notes tucked in our letters home.

My bill at Shoprite was 120,560. I rounded up.

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