Monday 20 September: I have not mentioned before that the Zambian currency is the Kwacha which comes in notes ranging from K50,000 to K50. With the exchange rate currently around K7,500 to the pound, the notes have values from about £7 to just under 1p. This means you end up with a wallet full of notes and there are no coins in use! It is ideal for street traders who go around with fists full of notes. Such is the effects of inflation. In Livingstone, which is near to the Zimbabwe border, there is a market amongst the street traders in selling tourists 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollar notes. I declined their offer so do not know what price they were asking.
The result of all this is that many prices are quoted in dollars. You still have to pay in Kwacha – but the dollar prices are converted using the exchange rate of the day.
Hera is a shot of the Arcade shopping centre - one of the newer developments in the centre of Lusaka:
And here are a couple of the shops we pass on the way to the office:
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