Secondo

After watching a five-hour long movie in Italian last night, I almost feel like speaking the language today.

Now about those dollars. I suppose the winner has got to be Habibi Dan, whose somewhat incoherent answer is closest to the truth, which is that there is no sensible explanation. No logical reason, no one to benefit even. There is only a ludicrous rationale that exists by virtue of itself, a symptom of the social psychosis that seeps through the seams here, and keeps visitors wide-eyed for months, possibly years.

So, the $20 bill is invalid because of the microscopic tear you can just about make out, top right in the picture. The $100 bill is invalid because it was printed in 1997, an unhappy period for eastern DRC. The $1 bill is invalid because…um, they don’t like $1 bills here. Other possible reasons for having dollars refused: the bill is too old, or too grimy, or it has been folded too many times, or it has one of those tiny holes in it that look like they were made by the thin end of a toothpick, or the picture depicted is a small head rather than a big head, etc. Meanwhile, the local bills, the ‘Francs Congolais’, are invariably accepted even though most of them are ripped through and through, taped together with yellowing scotch tape, sometimes with whole chunks missing…

Maybe it’s pride: if they have to trade in this disgusting, alien American currency instead of their own national currency, they sure as hell will make it as difficult as possible for us bloody ‘mundeles’. Fair enough. If I could at least believe that there was such logical reasoning behind it, it might not infuriate me so much to go through the daily routine of having my money inspected minutely in the sunlight by a cynical salesperson with a furrowed brow. But unfortunately I don’t really believe it. I believe that it is one of many irrational remnants of a troubled past, that little by little I may discover the historical explanation for this or that particular neurosis, which no longer makes any sense but has become so customary that no one thinks to question it.

In the meantime, I try to ignore the short fuse in me that causes me to storm out of shops from time to time, abandoning whatever articles I had planned to purchase and muttering under my breath about the need for nationwide psychoanalysis. I definitely need either a holiday, or a yoga teacher!