HARARE, ZIMBABWE — It's confusing.
The pale blue bank note that says 1,000,000 Zimbabwean dollars really means 10,000,000,000,000,000,000. Yes, that's 10 quintillion, taking into account the 13 zeros Zimbabwe's central bank has lopped off in the last couple of years to make the country's currency somewhat more manageable.
Every time they get out of hand, Zimbabwe's Reserve Bank scythes away 00000s. The largest note, Z$100,000,000,000, released in July and useless within weeks, looked so bizarre with all the zeros squeezed in that it became an instant collector's item.
Regardless, inflation is soaring so fast in Zimbabwe that it's hard to figure out what a Z$1-million note is actually worth on a given day.
Somewhere between July's Z$100-billion note and the more recent zero-reduced Z$1-million note, it's easy to get mixed up. Even more confusing are the wildly different exchange rates that depend on how you pay for purchases.
Zimbabweans chuckle when they see a foreigner bumbling with their currency. They launch into long, looping explanations that leave you lassoed by the zeros, and more confused than when you started. It's difficult to resist just holding up the Z$1,000,000 note and asking a reliable local, "What's this worth?"
But they can get confused themselves. To my surprise, when I tried it last month, my math-savvy friend no longer had the calculation in his head. So he pulled up his cellphone calculator and tapped away.
"Ech! My cellphone can't cope with all these zeros," he grumbled, while I stared at the bustling crowd on Robert Mugabe Street, wondering where they could be going, in an economy where nothing works.
Finally he had an answer: "That's worth about 50 cents, a bit less than 50 cents."
So I used the blue notes for tips. Fifty cents might not sound like much, but in early November, Z$1,000,000 was more than a week's pay for a police inspector.
After tipping car guards, parking men and waiters for several days, I checked the value again. It turned out my friend had been mistaken; the note had been worth about $4, not 50 cents.
Zimbabwe's hyperinflation rate, the highest ever known, is officially more than 230 million percent, but some economists place it in the quadrillions. It seems just a matter of time before Zimbabweans will be grappling with octillions, nonillions, decillions, duodecillions and more.
Just trying to explain the complications in the money system is, well, complicated.
