Bon Nuit!
Greetings from Kinshasa! I’m currently wrapping up project work here at 1:30am local time and wanted to provide an in site concerning the global cost of living.
Once you get out in the world and travel a bit most people find many surprises in the dramatic costs of the same goods and services in different areas of the world. For instance Washington, DC is a great deal more expensive than Oregon, Bolivia and Peru are more expensive than Ecuador, Togo and Benin are more expensive than Ghana, and Macedonia is cheaper than Kinshasa.
Looking around Kinshasa there isn’t anything that would indicate a higher standard of living or more difficult access to resources, but Kinshasa is much more expensive than West Africa. It is even much more expensive than my recent travels to Macedonia.
I still don’t have all the answers for these differences in what it takes to survive in different places. I lived as a Peace Corps Volunteer for $85 a month and a great deal of the world survives on less than a $1 a day. I remember coming back from Ecuador, my first experience living in a developing country, and couldn’t get myself to buy a magazine as I could have eaten for several days for the same price.
It’s late so I better get going and try to catch up on jetlag and overworking!
Miel
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