Columbia Star

1963        Celebrating 60 Years      2023

My Encounter with America

Part 6: Money blows up and yellow flour causes impotency



By Zadok Ekimwere
zomwere@hotmail.com

The meeting to review the first two weeks was somber because most reports were negative. Being cantankerous, the journalists presented their side of the story first. They complained there was a news black- out about their home countries or their activities in American media.

A local US newspaper which tried to cover one group gave a wrong headline, “South Africans learn about toxic waste,” when there was no South African in that group. They demanded an apology and a correction. The rest is history.

A bigger story came in about Dawara, the guy who demanded he be paid all his per diem and decided to go on his own. He knew America like his father’s compound. We learned that even before two weeks had elapsed he had blown up all his money and was bankrupt. As a result he had not paid for most of his bills and his property was confiscated.

Like a prodigal son, Dawara had called the organizers to apologize and to ask for more money to salvage his situation. But since all the disbursements were budgeted for, the organizers had no way to help him out. He was told to take care of himself. He later communicated to us that he was a business news stringer for a newspaper in Detroit. We next met in New York during the farewell party on the eve of our departure to Africa. He looked quite ruffled and deflated.

Meantime, there were a number of stories doing rounds among most journalists. Handling the dollars had caused too many transaction problems to the Africans. The currency is strong and broken down into small units like cents, which can also be used in purchases. Comparatively, most African currencies are in huge denominations, with bills of up to 100,000 units or more. In some countries there are no coins, if they are there, their purchasing power is nil.

So the Africans found it hard to cope with these currency differences. For instance if they saw a beer at $1, they thought it very cheap and just bought it, whereas the same beer could be 50 cents or less elsewhere. To them, a meal of $20 was cheap, when elsewhere it was for $3. In this way, the Africans had spent their money in very expensive purchases because in their countries prices are in thousands of units of whatever currency.

Those who thought they were smart by converting the dollar prices into their local currencies before purchases became a nuisance. It required asking for the dollar price, a calculator, knowing the exchange rate, and knowing how to do the conversion. This was quite irritating to the busy sellers. Some revelations were startling because after conversion, the price went into millions in the local currencies.

My story was different. It concerned food. In my culture, chicken is a delicacy, which is mainly served with matooke (cooked bananas) or with atap (millet bread) to important visitors. If you served a visitor chicken with rice, he would eat the rice with soup and pack his chicken to take home to eat it with matooke or atap.

After two weeks I got tired of eating chicken with chips or rice, and wanted alternatives near matooke or atap . The nearest cousin to them was maize flour. So I bought it.

After cooking my chicken, next was to make the maize meal. But when I opened the package, I found it was yellow flour. When I left Africa, yellow flour which had been donated to famine areas had been rejected because they claimed it made men impotent. No African man wants to be impotent. Though I threw away the flour, when I went back to Africa, people were now eating it, and I also ate it.

(Next week: The elections of 1980)




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