Money, when examined over several years in what was once the Belgian Congo, then Zaire, and now the Democratic Republic of Congo, gives an eloquent demonstration of the fleeting value of money. “Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy.” A young preacher was so instructed in the Bible.

We have related how home-made Z-Bills actually worked and how Zaires devalued and failed; how paper notebooks remained unsold to become a better currency than that issued by the authorities. Replacing devalued money with new money resulted in having no money. That is where we left off in our currency discussion related to Mobutu’s time of power in Zaire.

News did arrive at Rethy that some of the new currency had been seen, but only the 100 Nouveau Zaire note. According to the published value, one such note was worth about three times the monthly wage of a typical worker in our area. It is easy to speculate that the priority of paying the soldiers was the reason that those notes appeared first. The main road was no longer passable to Kinshasa so the money was flown, a little at a time, about 2,000 miles from the capital to Bunia. The three-thousand-mile road through the Ituri forest was no longer passable anyway.

No one spends a month’s salary on beans. If a soldier brings a 100 Nouveau Zaire note to the market place and asks for beans how can the seller make change?

Taking a one Nouveau Zaire note to the market place might have been reasonable, but since they hadn’t yet come to our area, of course it was impossible. It took quite a while for enough currency to show up, first the largest denomination, then slowly the smaller bills, and finally the one Nouveau Zaire note. Initially the smallest denomination would have been useful, but by the time it arrived it had devalued to the point that very few were ever used.

There was no way we could solve the absence of money the way Bob Zimmerman did in the remote, sparsely populated area around Bafuka about 30 years earlier.

The most pressing problem facing us now, was how to provide daily meals for forty at the Rethy Academy when we had nothing with which to purchase the vegetables.

The area around Rethy provided continuous perfect growing conditions for all garden vegetables. Ellen imported cans of Simlaw garden seeds from Kenya. She opened each can and measured the number of teaspoons-full found in the can, in order to calculate the price of each folded paper packet of the seeds. The veggie men grew any kind of seeds she sold and we purchased the vegetables for the Dorm, the Rethy station missionaries, and those at distant stations where no vegetables grew.

So now how could we price the vegetables with no money? The vegetables continued to grow and we all continued to eat. The price in the old Zaires using the exchange rate to US-dollars at that time became our reference, as on the latest station price list.

Now, at Editions CECA, we needed to obtain paper to continue work on our printing orders. The various chemicals, films, plates, and inks could be ordered directly from the suppliers in Kenya, and flown over using AIM-AIR or MAF, but it was impossible to fly the 2-foot by 3-foot 1000 sheet packages of stock paper in from Pan Paper in Uganda. Lainya had found an importer, Ukumu, from Ndrele who helped us. He proved to be trustworthy, regularly traveling to Uganda to purchase whatever he could sell in Zaire. Ukumu was supplying paper for the press.

We asked Ukumu to help us at the dorm as well. We had him buy salt, soap, and kerosene, thinking to use the barter system with the veggie men, exchanging salt & soap for vegetables. They in turn could exchange these at the marketplace for other things they might need.

Every veggie man who brought anything to the dorm weighed their produce with Hosea and the weight and value was written on a small square of paper. Hosea delivered the cookie sheets with the papers laid out for all the veggie men. Ellen gave them salt and soap in exchange, but it was immediately evident that bartering would not work. The veggie men soon said they had enough salt and soap, asking if the mama could just keep track of their money for them.

That is what Ellen did and soon she had over fifty different accounts in her notebook. How she kept all the men straight I’ll never know, but everyone trusted her. They trusted Hosea who wrote down the men’s names and the weight of what was purchased by the Dorm. She kept each man’s account in US-

dollars and continued to feed all of us, and sent vegetables to anyone who ordered them.

MAF picked up over 400 kilos of vegetables twice a week, all weighed, invoiced, sacked, and tagged for each missionary. She kept track of any money that may have come with the order and sent the invoices to the field treasurer for some of the larger buyers, like MZM, the Missionary Zaire Mart, at Nyankunde. She was called the Veggie lady. Hosea, our head cook, the top Veggie Man, and the growers who had brought in vegetables on any given day, all worked together to make it happen.

Somehow the absence of money caused hardly a ripple in the veggie service, things continued to be harvested, Ellen continued to get orders mostly through the radio, but often in the mail dropped off by MAF, addressed to the Veggie lady. The value of the veggies bought was added to the men’s accounts.

The biggest problem was that some people receiving the vegetables didn’t return the empty sacks. Ellen had a set of shelves where she alphabetically sorted any sacks that showed up in the incoming mail carried by MAF. Some sacks never came back, some came in with a tag that stayed with the sack, but those going to Banda or Assa would probably never return.

It was a marvel that the orders even got to those hot remote stations with the vegetables still edible. Since vegetables were such a treat the missionaries carefully removed the rotted outer leaves from what was dew covered lettuce when placed in the sacks at Rethy. No wonder the sacks were forgotten.

Sacks did come back with no name and empty dorm sacks from the dorm were also used so fresh Veggies were flown out from Rethy each week.

The Nouveau Zaires really did exist and we were eventually able to order Zaires from the field treasurer. The actual use of the new currency in Bunia gave rise to several exchange rates between the US$ and the Nouveau Zaire. The bank rate was so low, no one wanted to give hard currency and get so few of the Nouveau Zaires in exchange. The people still resisted using the 100 NZ note and even the 50 NZ note because they might be left holding money others would not accept because of their inability to make change. The smaller notes were thus in higher demand because they were useful.

How the field treasurer and the merchants worked out the details I can only guess, but the merchants still wanted US$ transfers and accumulated way more 100 NZ notes than they could use. The smaller bills could be used to pay their workmen and make purchases at the market. Our orders for money from our Dorm account were thus delivered at two different exchange rates. How does one make change for the larger notes, using the smaller notes which cost more? At the local market place four 20 NZ notes bought more than one 100 NZ bill did.”

Keeping accounts became quite a challenge. Each time we received an update on the exchange rates from the Field Treasurer, we cleared our cash accounts, calculating the cash value of the large and small bills we had on hand using the old exchange, then re-valuing at the two new exchange rates. We then entered the dollar exchange loss and absorbed it in the Exchange Loss account. The Veggie men wanted Ellen to just keep their accounts in dollars in her notebook. She did for a while.

Eventually the currency devalued to the point where we no longer had to deal with the two exchange rates and all the veggie men’s accounts were paid off and closed. Changing to a new currency did allow people to use smaller numbers when counting money and things went back to the steady devaluation with which everyone was so familiar.

It wasn’t long before we heard that the soldiers weren’t being paid and they took to a different method of getting what they needed. It was a sort of barter system. All they had was their guns and the remnants of their uniforms. The local contingent was living with their families in a small village halfway between Rethy and Kwandruma. How would they trade what they had for food?

Here is how it worked. Anyone who had to pass the soldiers’ camp on their way to the market, was offered an opportunity to barter. In preparation for bartering, a soldier unrolled a sleeping mat on the ground and sat behind it, leaning against the bank, with his gun across his knees. Carrying on her head a cloth covered basket-full of corn, a woman on her way to market was called over to barter with the soldier. She didn’t dare to ignore the soldier, holding his gun, sitting there with the mat in front of him.

He offered her an opportunity to exchange some of her corn for the services he supplied to the area, keeping everyone safe. She carefully lowered the heavy basket to the ground and untied the cloth with which it was wrapped. The small shallow dish inside was used to measure out the hard kernels poured out onto his matt making a pile of the white corn. She stopped, and looked at him. He motioned for more.

Another unsuspecting woman on her way to the market failed to get by unnoticed, and the first woman quickly tied up her load when the solder called the second one over. The barter system for safety was working.

A man on a bicycle riding in the other direction must have let the approaching traders know what was going on near the soldiers’ camp, because fewer and fewer sellers used the main road. Longer and longer routes were used to get to the market and more and more bartering stations had to be set up. For the most part the exchanges were peaceful.

The soldiers, in order to maintain peace at home, deployed themselves at various locations around the Kwandruma market place, and the people developed an efficient information system helping each other get to the there without having to pass the newest trading station.

After trading his peacekeeping services for Kaikpo, an unpaid soldier became so drunk on the potent brew, that peace was lost. He offered a trade to a young unsuspecting bicyclist carrying a large fish from the lake to the Kwandruma market. Agreement was not reached so the young man’s fish and bicycle became the soldiers’ property in exchange for the young man’s life.

Other government employees weren’t being paid either so they were looking for ways to offer their services to those who may not have wanted any service. The typical civil servant had some sort of official stamp to validate the documents he prepared. They needed to find someone who could be assessed a fine for failure to comply with the law. He could then establish the fine, collect the payment, and issue a valid receipt. The laws known only by the official were what he had to trade.

The one needing the service had to have money in order to pay so our local immigration official regularly inspected the missionary passports at Rethy. We were seen by him as a source of his wages, so he was looking diligently for “infractions”.

We now had money again, but with unpaid soldiers and unpaid civil servants we were approaching having no government.

The Bible says, “When they shall say, peace and safety then sudden destruction cometh upon them.” The source of true peace is Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

Do not rely on riches nor trust the government. It is better to trust in the Lord, than to put confidence in man.