HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!!!! It's not a holiday here so we're both working today but here's a semi-lengthy story for you while you watch football, cook, drink, etc.
Objective: Obtain $10,000 USD in Sub-Saharan Africa (fun fact: that's the same place as West Africa, but Sub-Saharan doesn't make people run screaming).
Steps:
1) Contact Mabel
2) Withdraw cash from Ghanaian bank account
3) Transport cash to the Holiday Inn
4) Negotiate exchange rate with Mabel at her "office" and exchange money
FX Basics:
Ever seen this in the airport?
Well, I live in Ghana. Therefore, I can BUY US Dollars from a Foreign Exchange Bureau with Ghana Cedis. Alternatively, I can SELL US Dollars to a Foreign Exchange Bureau for Ghana Cedis. These are referred to as the Buy and Sell rates. Why are they not the same? That spread is where these bureaus make their money. Banks have their own rates that they charge each other and the spread is minimal. The average of the interbank buy/sell spread for a particular day is generally the "spot" rate. The spot rate is what shows up if you google "USD to GHS".
If you're enough of a sucker to use Travelex (the popular bureau at most major airports), you'll have the satisfaction of being "bent over a barrel" while they take advantage of huge Buy/Sell spreads and outrageous service fees.
That's why I use Mabel
Who is Mabel?
I met Mabel during my first foreign exchange experience in which I was trying to buy Euros.
There's a small FX bureau in the shopping mall next to my office. They post their rates daily and their Sell rates are consistent with the spot rate each day. Knowing this, I intended to buy a couple thousand Euro for a trip.
Shopping Mall:
(Yes, that's a KFC. Yes, it tastes the same. Yes, it's very popular. No, it's not the subject of this story)
(Also, yes. that's a bright green airplane parked by the shopping mall. No, planes aren't green here. Again, forget the plane - not the subject of the story).
Unfortunately, the women behind the desk was not in her ideal profession. Calculators are only useful if the person using them knows what he or she is trying to accomplish. While I was trying to help her understand what inputs she needed to type in, a short bossy women cut in front of me and started yelling at the women behind the desk and doing her own transactions. I was quite confused because I learned cutting in line was bad back in Pre-School (I also learned I didn't like girls in pre-school because their pony tails would get in my face if I stood in line behind them). I was also a bit stunned at how rude she was to the women who was futilely trying to help me.
It wasn't until I saw that the short bossy women had rather large bricks of cash in various currencies that I realized she was the boss. That solved the cutting in line issue, but she still seemed like a b*tch. This was Mabel.
When Mabel realized I wasn't playing around and was getting a decent sum of money, she was actually quite polite and friendly. She gave me her number and told me to call her when I wanted to change money again.
Now I "have a guy" who I do my foreign exchange with.
How much should I withdraw from my bank account?
The spot rate at the time of this transaction was 3.3 GHS to 1 USD. Knowing I needed some extra cash (you know, since they don't have credit cards here) I decided to pull out 40,000 GHS.
Here's a picture of what $10,000 US Dollars looks like.
Not horribly impressive.
The largest bill in Ghana is fifty. The largest bill the bank was willing to give me - ten. That means I was going to get 4,000 ten Cedi notes. To put that into perspective, here's a stack of 33 ten Cedi notes - the equivalent to $100 USD.
As a result, I was given cellophane wrapped bricks of 5,000GHS in ten cedi notes. Luckily I had a large shopping bag that could handle the weight (roughly 5 pounds) and volume.
Transport to Holiday Inn
If this doesn't tell you anything about the safety of Ghana (or maybe my lack of intelligence?) I walked out of the bank with a shopping bag full of cellophane wrapped cash to take to Mabel. If only I had a brief case then I could've been like a drug dealer.
Why Holiday Inn? That's where Mabel's "office" with the big safe is. I say "office" because it's a little room about the size of a toilet stall. The room has a board with foreign exchange rates listed, a money counter, a calculator, and a giant safe.
Holiday Inn is about a 5 minute walk from the bank.
Holiday Inn:
It may seem like I was trying to build up to something dramatic, but it was uneventful. Bag didn't break. No one tried to rob me. The worst thing that happened was that I broke a sweat.
Negotiate with Mabel and
Although there's a board with posted rates, people changing large sums of money can get more beneficial rates. As I mentioned earlier, the spot rate at the time was 3.3 GHS to 1 USD.
To keep you from having to do the math, a 0.01 decrease in the rate will save me about $35.
I went to Mabel's office and was invited in. Despite the size of the office, we conduct our business in the office rather than outside due to the sum of money.
I proposed 3.25, Mabel countered with 3.29 and we settled at 3.27.
I start to unload my bricks of cash and she starts to unwrap them and send it through the money counter. A few punches later on the calculator, we shake hands and I walk out with a significantly lighter shopping bag.
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