Pinky's Tailing Box: a weekly wednesday feature of At a Bottom Now for Gold...
Spending abroad: Take Five...
When was the last time you walked into a K-mart and tried to buy a Tootsie Roll with a five hundred dollar bill? Try the same in any Guatemalan market place: a bunch of bananas, a half-dozen avacados, a papaya, a mango, and a carton of eggs and all you have to spend is the largest denomination of Guatemala's currency, the 100 quetzal note. Worth less than a $20 bill, for the low, wide end of the capitol's work force it represented a week's wages or better. "Lo siento, no cambio Señor," comes the storekeeper's changeless apology.
100, 50, 20, and sometimes even 10 quetzal notes were just too big for small, casual purchases. 50 centavo notes, along with the ones, were fine, but they didn't buy much and a wad of them stuffed anywhere was too conspicuous in a land where opportunity equals permission. That left the five quetzal note as the denomination of choice for adept small time shoppers.
I came to this epiphany while waiting in line at a Bancometropolitano branch office at Supermercado Paiz to cash my employing Guatemalan school's latest idea of a month's salary. I handed the clerk my deposit slip as my paycheck disappeared. But my morning's business required a withdrawal too. I had negotiated a $1,000 swap with a local missionary, a check issued in dollars for 5,000 quetzales. And there were personal needs. Brown hundreds, orange fifties, blue twenties, red tens, purple fives, green ones--I could use a small hoard of quetzales just for spending the next thirty days in living color.
It dawned on me at the teller's window that I didn't know how to say "change" in Spanish, or "convert" or "break up" or even "Don't just give me only fifties and hundreds."
So I said what I could, "I want some fives, please."
The clerk hesitated, then blurbed something I didn't understand before going to a back counter and discussing my request with a higher authority. Returning to his station, he peered into the depths of his currency drawer, shook his head, said "Un momentito," as much with his forefinger as his mouth, and shuffled to the drawer of a second teller. He seemed busy for a long time. I watched as rubberbanded stacks of cash piled up on the counter above his drawer.
What was this lunatic doing?
"Señor!" he drew my attention to a form set up in triplicate which he shoved through the half oval slot of his service window, "Su firma, por favor," he gobbled, pointing out where I should deliver my X. As to why my signature was necessary, I didn't know. I didn't care. I would have signed to board the Titanic just to get out of there. I scratched my X.
"Un momento," the teller put his hand up as if to stop traffic and if only could be believed, walked over to the vault, where he handed a superior the carboned papers.
What did I sign? What in the world did I sign?
The vault opened and they entered. One of them emerged with a sack of currency. Fourteen stacks of cash later, the teller said something in Spanish, which I missed because I wasn't paying any attention. OK, Ok, I didn't have a ripping clue on Mars of what he'd said, so once again I stupidly replied "Si."
"Muy bien."
Muy bien? Very Good? What was very good? Why was I always the last one to know what was going on?
He began counting out the stacks of five quetzal notes. When he ran out of those, he switched to tens. It then dawned on me what he had said. "We're all out of fives, Sir--would you like the rest in tens?"
I walked away with my pockets bulging with thick wads of cash screaming "Rob me! Rob me!" I'd only asked the guy for some fives. How do you say "some" in Spanish anyway? |
