A lack of change in Maseru

Small change, as Harvey Dangerfield would put it, gets no respect in Lesotho. I often find 2 and 5 cent pieces while walking, sometimes directly in front of or near groups of impoverished street kids. I tend to get strange glances or a bit of laughter when people see me picking them up. Amounts less than 10 cents are ignored to the degree that if you are owed change =<5 cents, shops simply do not give it back to you. I recently purchased something for M29.95 and got a dirty look when I asked for my change (and no change!). To some extent, I can see this motivated by the comparative lack of value of that much money – I have never seen anything for sale for less than M .95 in price. And yet, it still seems very strange to me. I know a variety of people have lobbied in the US for the phasing out of the penny on the grounds that it represents an amount so small and inconsequential that it no longer functions as an effective mechanism of transaction. There is some truth to that, but I still expect to get my 2 cents in change, perhaps because I would rather that the marginal bits of value the penny represents line my wallet rather than that of some corporate entity. Here, where so many are so poor by practically every material metric, it continually surprises me that people should be so nonchalant about money of even slight value.