A UNIVERSAL TRUTH

São Tomé, being a whole different country, does not use the Central-African francs (XFA) but its own currency: dobra. One euro amounts to 24 500 dobras, which means that the bills you pay in São Tomé are astronomical: a dinner might as well cost you a million!

Jandro has already visited São Tomé for work, and thus yesterday we started the impossible quest to find the dobras he had left, stashed away somewhere around the house, probably hiding from us on purpose. After a quarter of an hour of futile, frantic search, we remembered that one of the tupperware boxes in the kitchen did more than just keep our food dry: it was there that Jandro used to hide his cash. We proceeded to open the box and examine its contents (Hey! We still have some kisiel left!) but the money envelope was not there.

- I told you it wasn't there. A month ago or so I rearranged that shelf and all the boxes. - Kasia says helpfully.
- Right. Did you throw anything away? - Jandro gives her a suspicious look.
- Lot's of stuff. All the expired products you'd had there for months! - she cries thriumphantly.
- An old box of bisquits that was in the tupperware, by any chance? - that suspicious look again.
- Yeah. It'd been there for ages!
- Right. That's where I used to keep the money before you came. That's where the dobras were. - Jandro is resigned to his fate.

And that's how I threw away all our dobras (could be around 50 euro) and God only knows how many francs XFA that were still in there, forgotten. This is the ultimate proof: nothing good can come from cleaning.

Picture downloaded here.