• Toronto IslandsJuly 20, 2025

  

  (Trip Exchange Rate 1 USD to $1.37 CAD)

  My family spent two nights in Toronto recently. We took a tour of the Toronto Islands and not only did I learn they existed, the tour around them offered amazing views of the city.

  I’ve been to Toronto many times and this was the first time I didn’t exchange any USD for CAD money. It’s almost not necessary in our digital age but of course the exchange just happens behind the scenes now.

  I did tip our boat captain, but I just used $5 USD. Next trip, I will convert at least a few dollars.

• Monrovia, LiberiaMarch 15, 2025

  

  (Trip Exchange Rate LRD $198.2770 to USD $1)

  I visited Monrovia, Liberia in March of 2025 representing two nonprofit organizations from the United States. It was my first visit to the country and a wonderful experience. I can’t say enough about how friendly and welcoming the people there were.

  I exchanged currency a couple of times, but most people and places seemed happy to receive USD as well as their home currency. It took a little getting used to find out what felt right for tipping. The South African who sat next to me on the plane from the Cape Town suburbs gave me very bad advice. I severely under-tipped at first, but quickly learned what was more appropriate.

• Cape Town, South AfricaFebruary 20, 2023

  

  (Trip Exchange Rate $1 USD to 18.0771 ZAR)

  I visited Cape Town, South Africa in 2023 for Sister City International Seminar. It was the most beautiful country I have ever seen.

  However, a week in a foreign country can be challenging. It helps when almost everyone speaks English. Downtown Cape Town and its harbor area felt a lot like almost any major city in the United States but it was still important to understand the exchange rate when making purchases.

A Gallery of Memories: Currencies and Cultures

(Dayton, Ohio) – My art gallery is quiet this afternoon. A soft Ohio sunlight filters through the large front window, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air and catching the sharp, colorful edges of a sculpture from a young artist I’ve just started representing. At fifty-five, I find these quiet moments are when the memories travel best. My current passion is here, surrounded by canvases and carvings, but my education happened out there, in the world. I’ve only managed five countries—a paltry number for some, a lifetime for others—but combined with thirty states, they’ve painted a worldview that no art history book could ever provide. Each trip was a lesson in color, texture, and humanity. And, funny enough, in the simple, tangible reality of currency—that paper and metal that tells a story of a nation’s pride, its struggles, and its place in the world.

Ocho Rios, Jamaica

My first real taste of a different rhythm was in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. I went in the early 2000s, long before the gallery was anything more than a daydream. I remember the air, thick and sweet with salt and jerk chicken. Everything was vibrant, almost overwhelmingly so. The turquoise water, the impossible green of the foliage climbing Dunn’s River Falls, the explosive reds and yellows of the market stalls. The art there was woven into the fabric of life. Men sat under corrugated tin roofs, carving intricate figures from blocks of lignum vitae, their hands moving with a practiced, unhurried grace. It was a raw, honest creativity that I fell in love with.

The currency felt just as colorful as the landscape. We exchanged our U.S. dollars for a thick wad of Jamaican Dollars. Back then, the exchange rate was somewhere around 40 JMD to one USD. Holding a $500 Jamaican note, with the stern face of Nanny of the Maroons, felt like holding treasure, even if it was only worth about twelve U.S. dollars. It made you feel rich in a way, but it also taught a quick lesson in value. A cold Red Stripe beer cost a hundred of those dollars. A beautifully carved parrot might cost a few thousand. You learned to see the country through its own numbers. Using the local currency, rather than the U.S. dollars that vendors were often happy to take, felt like a sign of respect. It was an acknowledgment that I was on their turf, playing by their rules, and it opened doors. It started conversations that began with money but ended with stories.

Toronto, Canada

A few years later, I took a trip in the opposite direction: Toronto. It was a different kind of immersion. Where Jamaica was a singular, powerful culture, Toronto was a mosaic. I’d spend the morning in a neighborhood that felt like a slice of Hong Kong, have lunch in Little Italy, and then spend the afternoon in the Art Gallery of Ontario, surrounded by the iconic, windswept landscapes of the Group of Seven. It was a clean, orderly, and profoundly diverse city. The art scene was more formal—galleries and museums rather than roadside stalls—but just as vital. It was a culture of curated cultures, living side-by-side.

The money reflected this proximity to the U.S. We were dealing with the Canadian Dollar, the “loonie.” I went during a period in the early 2000s when the American dollar was quite strong. One of ours was worth about $1.50 of theirs. The effect was subtle but noticeable. Everything felt like it was on a permanent 33% off sale. A nice dinner, a theater ticket, a piece of Inuit soapstone sculpture I bought in the Distillery District—it all came with a pleasant little discount at the end of the mental calculation. Unlike the Jamaican dollar, which felt like a completely different system, the Canadian dollar was a familiar cousin. Its value was an easy conversion, a constant reminder of the deep economic ties and the invisible, yet very real, line that separated our two countries.

Cape Town, South Africa

The trip that truly changed me, that deepened the shadows and brightened the highlights of my understanding, was to Cape Town, South Africa. I went in 2012. You can’t visit Cape Town without feeling the weight of its history. One day I was standing on the breathtaking summit of Table Mountain, looking out at the convergence of two oceans, and the next I was in a tiny cell on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years. The contrast was staggering. The beauty of the place is haunted by the ugliness of its past. And yet, the art that has emerged from it is some of the most powerful I have ever seen. It’s an art of resistance, of reconciliation, of pain, and of defiant joy. I spent days exploring the galleries in Woodstock, seeing how artists were using their work to process and reshape their national identity.

The currency there is the Rand. When I visited, the exchange rate was favorable, around 10 Rand to one U.S. dollar. This accessibility was startling. A world-class meal at a restaurant overlooking the ocean might cost the equivalent of $30. It made this incredibly complex and beautiful country surprisingly affordable to explore. But that affordability had a sharp edge. It was a stark reminder of the economic disparities that linger long after the fall of Apartheid. Handing over a 100 Rand note—with Mandela’s own face smiling out from it—to a craftsman in a township market felt different than spending it in a chic boutique at the V&A Waterfront. The same note held different weights in different hands. The currency became a lens through which to see both the progress and the immense work that still remained.

Monrovia, Liberia

But the most profound journey, the one that stripped away all my preconceptions, was to Monrovia, Liberia. I traveled there with a non-profit that was helping to build libraries in local schools. This was not a tourist destination; it was a lesson in resilience. The scars of the civil war were everywhere—in the pockmarked buildings, the broken infrastructure, and the stories in people’s eyes. But the spirit was unbreakable. I met artists creating stunning, expressive works with salvaged materials—paintings on scrap metal, sculptures from bullet casings. It was art born not from comfort or academia, but from the urgent, desperate need to make sense of the senseless.

The currency situation in Liberia was a story in itself. The official currency is the Liberian Dollar, but in practice, the country runs on a dual system. The U.S. dollar is king. Historically, the Liberian dollar was pegged one-to-one with the USD. But decades of instability and war had shattered its value. When I was there, the unofficial exchange rate was climbing past 80 Liberian dollars to one U.S. dollar. The result was fascinating and sad. U.S. dollars were used for any significant purchase: rent, groceries, a piece of art. The local Liberian currency, worn and faded, was used as change. If you bought something for $4.50, you’d pay with a five-dollar U.S. bill and get back a handful of Liberian notes. The local currency had become a substitute for coin. It was a powerful, tangible symbol of the country’s deep historical ties to America and its ongoing struggle for economic sovereignty.

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Back here, in the quiet of my gallery, I’m surrounded by the fruits of these journeys. A small wooden carving from Cape Town sits on my desk. A print from a Toronto artist hangs on the wall. A striking mixed-media piece from a Liberian painter is waiting to be hung. I don’t have much from Jamaica here—those pieces belong to the community they came from. But the memories are just as present. My travels taught me that art is a universal language, but they also taught me that the specifics matter. The texture of a currency, its value in the hand, its history—it’s all part of the story. It’s the quiet context that gives the art its voice.