Beyond the border of the naira

All right, so we'll be starting our first conversation, first thoughts on inter-border travel from the borders, away from the borders of Naira, as you earlier stated.

And my first thought about it was that it's actually damn easier to travel across, you know, the West African coast, I would call that, than it is to travel within Nigeria.

for a number of reasons.

That's my own first thought, right? So let me hear what other people have to say.

I have some other thoughts, but let me hear what other people have to say.

Okay, so for Ahmed Young, traveling across, you know, West Africa, via road, meeting people.

My first thought is that as Africans, we are more alike than we think we are different.

We have so much more shared realities than we think, oh, you're Ghanaian, you're Nigerian, you're Togolese.

We have traits that just cut across.

We are really alike.

sites like languages currency and a couple other things pretty much i have like the same mamafrica blog that's it

thank you medyong for me i'm a money girl um so i think one of the things that i'm always thinking about is moving when you move from nigeria and you're thinking in naira if you're ending in naira oftentimes it becomes that conversation as to the currency exchange and i still don't understand i've said this before in a previous podcast But I still don't understand why there isn't like a regulatory body across the Bureau to change across at least Ghana, Togo, coming down to Benin.

Because there should be a regulatory body because you see 4.010 somewhere, you see... 410 somewhere from like 1000 naira to 410 in terms of sepha and then you see say 405 why there's no actual thing it's just that you met someone at the right place and then you met the other person at a different thing but although there's also the conversation about basically it's a market so any it can be porous in like certain places but still there should be some sort of regulatory body because why exactly are we doing all of this hard work and then we still have to basically cheat ourselves within within exchange also there's a part where they got where there's a part where ultimately the banks should actually go back to exchanging money for us because maybe they might actually be able to do this regulated thing better than the other ones

yeah just to add to what she said i think the sephar suffered by naira That's another reality because imagine you had 1 million.

What it means in Zephyr is like you have, depending on who's exchanging for you, you have anything between 400,000 to 400,000.

410 there about yeah so i think that was like one of my rude awakenings when i moved but let me let me go to like the first um like my first experience like just leaving you know nigeria um It's not as hard as people.

So I'm having conversations with some of my friends and in their mind, they're like, it's actually not a flex.

I actually feel really sad that at my big age, I now get to travel.

I don't think Nigerians, I think you could spend you could splurge that amount of money within nigeria so a lot of people are seeing it like oh you need no i think if you're going to travel around africa at least not europe and if you're going by a road um because for me was the one who like put together the whole road trip it's actually i love road trips it's just insecurity in nigeria but coming across i guess less population smaller people size it's safer right it's calmer so I think if this is something you want to do and you work full time, you can save up to it, honestly.

Of course, I don't want to disclose how much I paid on the podcast because it can differ from time to time depending on what's happening in Naira or what places you're going by.

I feel like another thing I realized on this journey is it's really not that hard, man.

i took um seven days leave this journey is four days i'll be spending the remainder of my days in lagos right so i think if you are going to be on a holiday at some point i think this is something you should definitely explore and just like what median said you would realize that, I mean, they speak French here.

I don't speak French, but sometimes it's just the IQs, the smiles, and you're already communicating with this stranger that you've never seen.

You're sharing a smile.

And it's just so uplifting, really.