My (Marianne) first Blog!!
The monetary unit for Zambia is the Kwacha. There aren’t any coins only notes. The biggest value is K50 000 - R75; K20 000 - R30; R10 000 - R15; K5 000 – R7.50; K1000 – R1.50; K500 – 75c; K100 – 15c and last K50 – 7c. So as you can see on the photo there’s quite a lot of notes for very little money. Those notes are worth about R1.60. You can draw K2 000 000 at the ATM at one time – R3000.
The monetary unit for Zambia is the Kwacha. There aren’t any coins only notes. The biggest value is K50 000 - R75; K20 000 - R30; R10 000 - R15; K5 000 – R7.50; K1000 – R1.50; K500 – 75c; K100 – 15c and last K50 – 7c. So as you can see on the photo there’s quite a lot of notes for very little money. Those notes are worth about R1.60. You can draw K2 000 000 at the ATM at one time – R3000.
There are 2 huge shopping malls in Lusaka, The arcades has a big Spar, satellite shops, Ster-kinekor Banks and Restaurants. Manda Hill, a multi storey shopping centre has just been completed and the grand opening was on 4 Dec. There you can find most South African Retail Stores, Game, Shoprite, Mr Price, Woolworths, Foshini, Milky Lane, Multichoice, OK Furniture and lots more but don’t think you buy items for the same price as SA, you’ll most likely pay double for them here.
Most luxury items are very expensive. Both these shopping malls are about 10 min drive from
where we live, if we don’t have much traffic. (Like on a Sunday). There are no bottle stores here & you can buy all your alcohol at the Supermarkets. Wine is very expensive, to you give you an example, 1.5 l of Four cousins Rose will set you back K99000 – a whopping R150 per bottle. Chateau Libertas K77000 - R115, Graca K48000 – R72, so I have decided to stick to the local Mosi beer K4980 –R7.47 and Vodka K48280 – R73. Apparently there are some local Zambian supermarkets that are cheaper but we haven’t got around to finding them yet.
Most luxury items are very expensive. Both these shopping malls are about 10 min drive from
where we live, if we don’t have much traffic. (Like on a Sunday). There are no bottle stores here & you can buy all your alcohol at the Supermarkets. Wine is very expensive, to you give you an example, 1.5 l of Four cousins Rose will set you back K99000 – a whopping R150 per bottle. Chateau Libertas K77000 - R115, Graca K48000 – R72, so I have decided to stick to the local Mosi beer K4980 –R7.47 and Vodka K48280 – R73. Apparently there are some local Zambian supermarkets that are cheaper but we haven’t got around to finding them yet.At the Spar there is a Forex exchange for your foreign money, after pay day we decided to change $200 to Kwachas which was equivalent to K90000. A couple of days later we went to change $1000 so that we would have enough money to last for a while, not really thinking of the” kwacha” consequence , needless to say the lady at the Forex had to tie the money up with a rubber band and we hardly had enough space in my handbag to carry it all.
George is the gardener at the estate where we live, he is also the security on weekends. George has strict instructions from the caretaker that our car may not leave the estate dirty. So by 7 o’clock in the morning our car is spotless and it gets washed twice a week. This photo is of Louis and George. George is smiling because we actually pay him K5000 and Louis is smiling because that’s only R7.50!!
Oh, by the way, & we also have a Northgate shopping complex!
Don't ask!
