Valuing Fake Dollars

Darren has been around a lot!

A fellow dromomaniac hailing from a tiny town in the far north of New Zealand’s North Island, he has lived and worked on four continents and travelled extensively on six. We swap tales on special moments in our most beloved countries, including Bolivia and Pakistan, and it transpires he grew up supporting Watford Football Club through a love of Luther Blissett and John Barnes, two of the town’s legendary players – and the football club haven’t had too many of these.

Darren is now in Namibia having brought his much used Landrover down from Morocco along the West Coast of Africa, not always a popular route due to “internal difficulties”. Not surprisingly he has had a few “difficulties” himself on his journey down, most notably in Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo where he has been pulled over by the police at gunpoint demanding money.

But Darren has come prepared. His last domicile was Hackney, in East London where he purchased good quality forged dollars at about 10% of their face value. He keeps these in his pocket at all times for just such occasions. He slips out a couple of notes and goes along his merry way. Brilliant!

His journey sounds interesting, if somewhat fraught with danger at times, but arriving into Namibia, he feels he has reached an oasis which he is very reluctant to leave. Leave he must as he still has the rest of the East coast to navigate. However this is a road more travelled, and like myself he is hoping for less scary moments on the journey.