MONEY CHANGERS

One of the jobs for the volunteers is changing money for members of the team so that they can spend a little and add to the local economy for gifts, restaurants etc. This is the way it works. Rwanda is a cash society. Very few places take credit cards. We bring our dollars in the form of CLEAN, UNMARKED, NON-FOLDED $100 bills. Designated volunteers take these pristine $100, each in its own legal sized envelope to the money exchange (these are not banks but have the best exchange rate!). Then we exchange $1500=$2000 at a time (a lot of envelopes!) for dirty, folded Rwanda francs. One dollar buys 6.5-6.78 R francs. So each $100 bill comes out of the envelope, handed to the cashier and we receive a wad (678,000)dirty, Rwanda francs!