Gabriel drove Laura and me to the ForeX bureau in Kampala to change our U.S. dollars into Ugandan shillings. Actually, Gabriel did the exchange because Ugandans get better exchange rates. This guy was tasked with walking across a very crowded street with piles and piles of dollars and returning with even bigger piles of shillings…unharmed. I’m glad to report he was quite successful.
The current exchange rate is 1:2 something but we use the general translation of dividing the shillings in half and removing three zeros. So, for example, a box of unbranded Honey Nut Cheerios cost 12,000 shillings or $6.00.
About that cereal…I bought them all by myself. Okay, so the store clerk spoke English and the shilling bills are numbered, and the prices were posted. But still… On another note, I wondered why the cereal felt like a brick inside the box. When I opened it this morning I found out why. The honey part of the Cheerios had fused together under the normal heat of the day.
So I took the first bite of my brick of Os and Lauren warned me to watch for maggots. Okay…um…she coulda said something before I took that bite. Apparently some product packages aren’t sealed well enough and the maggots work their way in. Now I just have to keep what remains of the brick from the tiny red army.
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