So, using money in Malawi feels rather like using Monopoly money. A fifty is really the smallest bill used in the villages, and when you exchange money at the Forex bureau you get a stack of 2000s. For rough approximation purposes when I go shopping, I treat 2000MK as $2. Yes, that's right; the exchange rate is actually more than a 1000 to 1. The first time that I went to exchange a $100 bill, I received 127000MK. Yesterday I received 129000MK.
While this is an astronomical difference, it is fascinating what is cheap in Malawi, what is the same, and what is more expensive.
Labor is one of the things that is cheap. A manual laborer in Malawi typically earns 1000-1500MK. So just around a dollar a day. While basic food items are also cheap allowing the $1 to go much farther in Malawi than it would in the US, the average manual laborer only keeps himself and his family alive, because they have a large subsistence plot. Rural Malawians, especially in the villages grow most of what they eat and the monetary wages are for things that they can't grow.
You can imagine, however, how devastating a bad crop year is. Someone who earns a dollar a day is not going to be able to afford the bag of beans or maize when his own have run out. As of a week ago, a bag of beans that would feed a family of four for a month was $17. That same laborer is not going to be able to pay school and exam fees ($700 a year) or medical treatment.
Food grown in Malawi is cheap. An egg, brown free range, and just gathered that day, is 100MK, so less than 10¢, which makes the astonishing price of a dozen organic free range brown eggs $1.20. Although, maybe they're not quite organic as there is so much plastic on the ground everywhere that the animals pick through. Let's just say free range.
Local honey from a women's co-op is around $2.65. Raw Sugar grown and processed in Malawi is about $1.29.
A bunch of 3 just ripened bananas is 10¢, while a single carrot is about 10¢.
Apples from South Africa, absolutely delicious, but small, are 30¢ ea. Then there is real butter. Dairy products are not common in Malawi as refrigeration is not common. The only option for real butter available at the big American style grocery store in Blantyre, the commercial center of Malawi, was imported from South Africa and around $8 a lb.
Books also cost the same in Malawi as they do in the US, which makes them pretty out of reach for the majority of Malawians. 14,000MK for one of the Narnia books.
So, on that note, now that I am in Malawi I am wishing that I had brought so many more books and school supplies with me. Some things like books are available, but out of budget. Other things like art supplies are available, but the quality of what I have seen was, well, really cheap.
My mother has kindly put together a Sign-Up Genius with my wish list if any of you would be so kind as to contribute. Used books are totally welcome. The books and such will go in checked baggage, either with Fr. Dominic when he hopefully comes for a family visit or with one of my siblings when they visit a bit later in the year. I and the students of Our Lady of Lourdes appreciate your generosity!
(If you're not familiar with Sign-Up genius, it will ask you to join as a member, but you don't have to, just click through)
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