200,000 shillings

Now that we’ve been here a while, we’re completely used to Tanzanian money. When someone says that, say, a garbage pail costs “elfu kumi” (10,000), I no longer blink. I think the cheapest item I’ve seen here has cost ishirini (20) Tanzanian shillings (Tsh), and that was a book of matches.

While I’ve gotten over the sticker shock at all of those zeroes, I am still stunned by the discrepancies in cost between my “regular” life and life here. I recently needed to fill out a residency application, and the immigration clerk was walking me through the form and filling in the form for me. There’s a line that asks for “Particulars of means (house, property, income, etc. full details required).” I paused to think: How much is our house, property, and income worth at the current rate of exchange (roughly $1 buys 1320 Tsh)? Clearly, we’re millionaires in Tanzanian shillings. After waiting for a second, the clerk said, “It’s okay; you have enough.”

So how much is enough? To give you a sense of what life in Zanzibar costs, here is a list of what 200,000 shillings ($149.25) can buy:

• 50-70 kangas (colored cloths), depending on how well the purchaser bargains, or
  
• 20 dinners at our favorite Indian restaurant, or
  
• 133 child’s portion vegetarian Zanzibar pizzas at the night market, or
  
• 333 bottles of mineral water, or
  
• 1000 mangoes, or
  
• 800 rides on the dala-dala (bus), or
  
• 4000 photocopies, or
  
• 400 laser printed pages, or
  
• 1 overnight getaway to a tourist resort, including meals and snorkel trip, or
  
• 4% of a year’s tuition at the school where expatriate children (including ours) attend, or
  
• 1 year’s tuition at my university colleague’s private elementary school, or
  
• 1 emergency appendectomy at the good local hospital (not the free hospital), during which our friend’s wife and mother to his children died
  

How much is enough?