[Stoves] 5 USD per this armful sized bundle of fuelwood of softpine fuelwood

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Ken

 

So nice to hear from you after all these years.

>Gasoline is $4.59 this week in Berkeley, and $9.20 a US gallon back in the
UK.

I filled up the pickup truck yesterday at the SeTAR Centre: ZAR 740.00. I
could not believe my eyes. That is just about $100 for 66 litres. $5.75 a
gallon. A rural farmer with government support for children might get 1.5
tanks of fuel a month in income.

I found that one of the reliable ways to tell what a local salary should be
is measured in beer and gasoline. The local cost of 24 beers and 100 litres
of gasoline is often a standard local salary.

Remember that Angola was for a time on the 'beer standard' where local
currency was useless. Beers can't be created and have near universal value.
It is also a decent value so it applied to many commodities (3 beers, 2 for
5 beers). As only the brewery could create a beer, counterfeiting was
impossible. Very practical.  The same with gasoline and diesel. I heard that
the WB used to use the gasoline and beer calculation in Uganda as a way of
coping with rampant inflation in the local currency.

Best regards

Crispin in thundery Johannesburg

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