Sudanese Currency

Atbara, Sudan

 

One of the great "joys" of traveling is trying to understand the different currencies of the world. In North America and most of Europe, things are pretty straight forward. Romania was the first country I visited where things got a bit complicated with two currencies in circulation, the "old" and the "new" LEI. In that case, the difference was four zeros, so 100,000 old LEI's was equivalent to 10 new LEI's. They have paper money for both and both are widely in circulation, so keeping track of change and how much money you actually have in your wallet is somewhat tricky.

 

In Turkey, to combat inflation, they simply dropped six zeros from the old currency. So 1,000,000 of the old Lira is equivalent to 1 new Lira. This is actually pretty easy to adopt to since you can quickly tell which currency a price is being quoted in and likewise make the mental switch to whatever you have in your wallet. Odds of anything being 1,000,000 in the new currency are extremely unlikely.

 

Syria, Jordan and Egypt all had just one form of currency, so that was easy to deal with.

 

Sudan, however, takes the cake when it comes to confusion. In Sudan, the money in your wallet and the money that the banks deal with is called Dinars. However, this was apparently introduced by the "new Islamic" government and wasn't widely adopted by the people, so most, if not all, people still quote prices using the old Sudanese pound value. The problem is that there is only a difference of 10x, so if someone tells you bus ticket costs 20000, they really mean it costs you 2000 Dinars, since that's what you have in your wallet. There are no pounds in circulation, and prices are never quoted with the currency. (You never hear, 2000 Pounds, just 2000). Since the difference is only 10x, it's easy for confusion to arise when trying to negotiate a price for transportation. It also doesn't help that I can't say these numbers in Arabic (yet) and when the locals say them in English, they generally make mistakes, mixing up "thousands" with "hundreds". At the end of the day, the best way to negotiate is to just show the money that you're willing to pay, which will be in Dinars, then hope that everyone is on the same page. Of course, the real beauty, is when a local tries to be "friendly" to you as a foreigner and quote you prices in Dinars for your benefit, then things get really confusing...

 

For those interested, one US dollar is roughly 230 Sudanese Dinars and Sudan, so far, has been noticeably more expensive then Egypt with regards to transportation and in some cases food. (Breakfast in Egypt consisting of four felafel sandwiches would cost me around 35 US cents, while in Sudan a breakfast of 3 eggs with 3 pieces of bread is around 1.25$US)

 

Kenny