2nd Day (08/20/08)

Today I just did some odds and ends. I fixed Carmen’s CD/DVD drive on her laptop. A bit later some of us decided that we would go downtown to get cell phones since our phones did not work here. To do this, we needed to exchange some of our American money over to Haitian Gourdes (HTG). Goud is the Creole term for Gourde. Making purchases can be a little confusing. For starters, the USD is exchanging at about 39 HTG. However, most people go by what is referred to as the Haitian Dollar. I don’t know the history behind it, but a Haitian Dollar is worth 5 Gourdes. So, when you are in a store and see that a bottle of shampoo costs $45 that is 45 Haitian Dollars which is 225 HTG which is then 5.76USD. I heard that a law was passed which requires everyone to go by the Gourde, but I don’t know if that is catching on since everyone is stuck in their ways. The actual bills say Goudes but the people are so used to calculating the Haitian Dollar in their head that they find it easier to calculate by the Haitian Dollar even though it requires them to make another calculation. Later, once we had our Haitian money, we jumped on mopeds (which are the taxis here) and went down to get phones. I didn’t need the phone since I brought mine. I just bought the SIM card so I could use my phone here. I like taking the mopeds. I know that if I had grown up in Haiti, I definitely would have wanted a job as a taxi driver here when I was younger. It seems like so much fun.