Of sewn shorts and cheque books: My family’s financial time travel

Recently, I had a conversation with my father about his early school days. Like every parent, he has told me about the kilometres he had to walk barefoot every cold morning to get education, including the wide rivers, with big crocodiles, that he had to swim across. I was grateful that this time, he talked about something we had never talked about before: How he carried his school fees to school on opening days.

Money was scarce in his family, which made the risk twofold: Getting the money stolen or losing it while in transit to school; and the temptation to squander the money meant for school fees. To eliminate any of these risks, my dad said his mother secured the money in such a way that, “even he could not steal from himself”. The notes were folded and sewn somewhere inside his school shorts, meaning that only someone else could help him remove the money from inside his clothes after he arrived at school.

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This conversation naturally took us to the conversation about money orders, which were quite the popular mode of school fee payment when I was in school.  My mother helped me understand how that worked because it must have been powerful to do something called a money order! Money orders were obtained from a post office.

My biggest struggle, even as my mother explained, was understanding where the post office would source the money from because a post office is not a bank, until she explained: “You needed to have an account with Postbank!” Isn’t it interesting how things come and go in this life!

Cheque

Still about modes of moving money around, my dad told me the story of his first cheque book. He brought it out as an exhibit from somewhere on his shelf, perhaps because he suspected I did not fully believe his story about a book of cheques. He told me how proud he was when he received it. But after the initial usage, the small, rectangular book now sits on his shelf as a relic from a past discarded too soon.

My first cheque, which I received about a year ago, felt like a party. I remember holding the cheque in my hand and feeling nostalgic about things I didn't even know. I was more excited about receiving the cheque, than I was about the money! Eventually when the cheque arrived, I took photos of it and shared it with some of my friends.

I called about five people my age to find out if they had ever received a cheque in their lives. I was doing a social experiment to see if my excitement was disproportionate. For some, the answer was an immediate no. Others took time to remember what a cheque was. One asked, “A cheque is that thing we learned about in school? Wait! Does it exist in real life? Please, take a photo and show me when you get it,” she said, and we both laughed.

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For many of my friends, the idea of a cheque is cutely antiquated. They have neither seen nor touched one before. Besides direct bank deposits, many of my friends said they interact with money through their phones, same way I do. This must explain why it took so long for me to receive my first cheque as an adult.

After the excitement died down, it was time to remember the process of converting a cheque into money. Do you clap three times; do you sing for it? I vaguely remembered my business studies lesson about cheques; something about a ‘drawer’ and ‘drawee’ and ‘a cheque number’, but nothing useful or specific. I went online to do my research, and felt sufficiently confused.

M-Pesa transactions

I wondered for the first time why they did not just send the money to my M-Pesa to reduce my ‘workload’? Eventually, I walked into a bank, asked the askaris to show me the form to fill. I soon walked to a teller, half of the things were filled wrongly. But I met a nice and understanding officer who walked me through the process, with a smile and reassured me that I would have the money in my account in two days.

Thanks for attending my crash course in money history! Hopefully, next time, I’ll be writing as a seasoned cheque expert.

The writer is the Research & Impact Editor, NMG ([email protected]).