Becoming The Muse

Reminisce Cents

I still haven’t found what I am looking for….. an African fintech solution that offers borderless financial sevices to and from regional and global financial institutions…. As detailed in my article on Unease Of Business in Africa.. If you find one, do tell me, meanwhile here’s a trip down banking lane…

I miss the good old days, when if you put money in the bank, not only would it still be there the next time you checked, it would be readily available and might even earn a bit of interest… I remember my parents opening my first bank account when I was 8, the Zimbank Kiddy Bank Account, I must have been a menace singing the bank’s jingle:

Kiddy bank kiddy bank kiddy bank club,
we are the kiddy bankers.
Saving for the things we want, saving for the future,
Kiddy bank kiddy bank kiddy bank club
We are the kiddy bankers,
Open a kiddy bank account and help to save the environment
🎶 🎶 

I had a bank book and would deposit small bits of the pocket money I had saved into the account. The only was catch was that to make a withdrawal, you needed your parent or guardian, so I hardly made withdrawals and the balance grew over the years, I also suspect my parents put a bit into our accounts on a regular.

When I turned 13 the account was upgraded to the Zimbank Teen Bank Account, the beauty of this one was that it came with an ATM card, which meant that one could withdraw money from ATMs and swipe for goods in shops. This was also the year I stared boarding at secondary school and the bank balance that had been saved up over the years become a valuable resource to supplement my personal requirements i.e tuck

In boarding school, an enterprising teen with a bank account can very easily set themselves up as the go to person who can make things happen, for a fee of course. I already had alternative streams of income like for example using my writing skills to write letters for people, offering a phone booth service and then procurement of pocket money.

The school was on a Catholic Mission farm miles away from anywhere and parents were barred from visiting, except on designated days, once a term. Now if one ran out of pocket money, one would be in a spot of trouble until the next miracle happened—unless there was reliable person who had a bank account who could have money deposited on behalf of the concerned party, for a premium… naturally.

In hindsight, I don’t understand why the other kids did not also get their own accounts… but it worked out for me because it meant when they got pocket money, I also got pocket money… I finished school and went on to use that bank account for years and years, until the economy took a wild nosedive to the rock bottom sub-basement, with money in banks losing value quicker than you could check the balance.

My grandmother, mbuyahwe, bless her soul, never trusted banks, she had her reasons. She always had change folded into corners of her wrappers, shawls and head scarfs, the rest of her stash was stored in airtight bottles buried beneath the granary…

I having lived through more economic melt-downs than anyone has any business experiencing and wish my grandmother was here so we could laugh and laugh at how for all the fancy talks of progress we are back to the era of National Mattress Savings Bank…

You put money in the bank and they charge you to keep your money, then they charge you to check your balance and charge you make purchases or withdraw, at the end of the day you will be wondering why you even have money in the account, cause every time you blink the balance reduces until there’s nothing left… oh and the government could make a currency announcement that changes everything overnight…. They have done this….

How do you save money? Well you first have to have money before you can save it….

~B

#WinterABC24