Let's Make A Deal

This place is great for getting some cheap work done. I'm able to get quality assistance for a variety of jobs and give away things that are worthless to me but a great find for some of my friends.

For example a few weeks ago I was in Mporokoso picking up my mail, but due to some confusion, they did not allow me to bring a package home with me that day. But I was busy the next and really did not feel like biking for 2 hours either. So I talked to my homestay dad to find out what an appropriate price would be to pay someone to bike in a nd pick it up for me. The price I was quoted was 2000 kwacha. That is just under 50 cents. So apparently it is ok to hire someone to ride a bike for 25 miles, 3 hours for less than a buck.

Example 2: One of my farmers owes me 45,000 ($10ish) for some small fish I gave him awhile back. I recently went to collect from him and he told me that money was a bit tight right now. I'm not a real tough loan shark and have a soft spot for my farmers' predicaments, but he has some excess chickens so we decided he'd give me 3 chickens in exchange for forgiveness of his debt to me. That will bring my grand total to 4 chickens I keep at my house.

Example 3: One of my friends, Edward, came over to help me fix my roof some time ago. As we negotiated to appropriate price, we finally decided on the following for about 3-4 hours of manual labor; 4 candles, a dozen nails, an empty vodka bottle (to put his own homemade booze in), an empty tin can, and a Newsweek magazine. I thought I was ripping him off, but shortly after that business transaction, I had a whole host of people offering to work for me because they heard I paid well.