The torn dollar story

Money is money is what I have always known. Nomater, how a note looks like i have always known it to work but hey that's not the case now in my beloved country. If you ever find yourself with a torn note of a dollar you will be in serious trouble, well that's not an exaggeration because you will understand as I explain.

So ,for the average person who counts their money ,you know kind of to see what cash they have to spend for the day, one has to be very careful when getting change so that you are not 'tor dollar dumped.' This would really be hard to understand from outside but here's the deal. If you find yourself with a torn dollar ,then you are in for it. I usually used to just count it as a loss, move on woman until my kids taught me a trick.

So, while we have our own currency called the ZWG, since the mid 2000s Zimbabwe adopted a multi-currency fiscal system allowing us to use the US dollar, the South African Rand among many other currencies but these two being the popular ones. From then, the circulating tender became the USD. Remember ,this is foreign tender and no Zimbabwean bank prints it ,if you follow carefully then you know there's no way torn notes won't be in circulation.

So, picture this, the moment you find yourself with a torn note you have to pass it to another discreetly because no one wants it at all. In public transport, once the operator sees that you paid with a torn note, he will out you and demand for a 'cleaner' non torn note. It's always a jungle .

My thing is, i'm always puzzled because we don't print these notes here in Zimbabwe so where do we get clean notes from? Let's just circulate what we have as long as it shows that it's legal tender.

Some people have come up with solutions. You can see some people in the street advertising that they ,'buy torn notes', i haven't researched on what they use them for. But they definitely buy them at half their value. Like your dollar becomes 50c which for some is better than no value at all. My kids though, taught me a trick which is to try and fix the bill by using nail glue. The process is so meticulous and has to be done well so that its not visible it was fixed. So, at the end of the day I still pay my kids to fix any torn money that i somehow end up with because I hardly check my change.

Anyway, its something that bothers me that we spend so much time having to concentrate on not getting a torn bill in a country that is supported by an informal market. Vendors are all over the streets and trust me statistics mention women constituting a greater number. While we should formalize our informal sector and empower women to continue having an economic base, our focus is on survival. One time, the streets are being cleaned meaning driving all vendors away while another its about talks of formalizing which never come.

I see how hard my fellow Zimbabweans work to make a living and I just hope for a time when we wont survive but we will thrive, when a torn dollar isn't something that makes you sweat because that's the last one you have and you have to pay in public transport.

Maybe I hope too much,but whats life without hope?