i have almost exactly $100 for this last week in nairobi

because, you see, a kindly jackass swiped my ATM card number…

  • and started posting charges in montrĂ©al on saturday
  • (there was an attempt to spend $636 at a jewelry store, presumably in christmas presents… charming!)
  • but luckily, my bank had smart enough algorithms to catch this and e-mail me this morning
  • with five charges processing (with one of them, a timely cash withdrawal in nairobi, being legit)

BoA fraud protection has been very good about this

  • and been wonderfully helpful, friendly, and astute on the phone from afar
  • especially since i am a generally hopeless case although i pay for my own (expensive) mistakes, having lost my iphone (and US sim) last weekend (drunk)
  • particularly since this is the second time this has happened to me in three years
  • when i had my card stolen right before i was moving from philly to new york
  • life is symmetric in funny ways, eh?
  • i think this is a huge part of why i am still a customer of theirs
  • despite the annoying fees, and the wider robo-signing foreclosure abuses, and my general sympathy with eric cantona’s calls for a bulge bracket boycott

at the present moment, i have 8000 KSh (or about exactly $100) in my wallet

  • from now until i get back to my mailbox and a new card in brooklyn
  • which is utterly doable and should be kind of fun
  • even if none of the places here will take my backup corporate amex
  • but every vendor i would absolutely need to
  • like the hotel for a layover in europe
  • will
  • so i think i’m pretty okay

it certainly pales in comparison to drew’s saga of police assault and living on a sack of potatoes with no documentation in russia

  • although this will be annoying in amsterdam on the 18th
  • i have the corporate card with curiously large credit line in my possession
  • and the electronic ticket to yelle @ melkweg in my inbox
  • does anyone know if european banks or forex desks will let me cash a BoA check to myself?

ultimately, i am still a pampered consultant with a roof over my head

  • (on the client expenses for this project)
  • and i am safe
  • and sound
  • with plentiful material assets
  • including groceries enough for at least three meals
  • and clean water and electricity
  • which is literally a world of luxuries
  • from what most people in kenya, or the world,
  • can count on

imagine you’re disconnected from this formal world of finance

but liquidity traps are a daily fact of life for you

  • your earnings and family’s future are tied up in the cow or bicycle, which makes it a real dilemma if you need to strip that asset to pay for surgery after a traffic accident or cancer diagnosis
  • will a bank lend to a dying woman? and why does this have to happen? why does the national health insurance fund only disburse 40% of its funds*?
  • capital begets capital under keynesian principles, and money multiplication is a magical and neoliberal peace-making thing
  • but what happens to the ones starting without wealth?

say you…

  • work seven days a week to finally build your own house from the daily breakdown of your body as you become an illegal migrant in your own country, and then watch as your kid’s college degree from a lifetime of savings proves worthless
  • find that the orchard that takes thirty years of your life to literally bear fruit is uprooted by invading soldiers taunting “peace”
  • get screwed by a prison system that extorts taxpayers to deprive you of nutrition and education even though these are the things that will keep you from re-offending when you’re out, to speak nothing of the few funds available to your family to keep you in communication with a semblance of the outside world

higher standards come to mind

and it can start with $100 in your wallet.


*conversations with an ngo country manager and former diplomat who knows his stuff, but not in the official press