The cost of Love

Prepare yourself for a crazy story I still can’t wrap my head around.

While in Cuba, my friend Jose-Angel and I went to the pharmacy to pick up some medicine for his baby. As we left the pharmacy he asked me “Do you use condoms in Canada?”. A bit startled I said “Yes…” he then replied “Do you want me to buy you some here, I hear they are really cheap.” Being single I don’t have much of a need for condoms at the moment but I was intrigued so I continued the conversation…

He went on to tell me that he can buy them for $0.15 for 3! I was in shock! BUT WAIT!!! It gets crazier! I was thinking that is $0.05 per condom. Turns out that $0.15 he was speaking of was CUP not CUC. CUP is the Cuban National Money and CUC is the Cuban Convertible Peso for tourism…

So let’s try the math… 1 CUC = 25 CUP so when you convert that $0.15 it now becomes $0.006!!!! That isn’t even one full cent for 3 condoms!!!! I thought he must be wrong because that is ridiculous so I wanted to test this and sent him into the pharmacy with 3 CUP. He returned with 21 three-packs of condoms!

I was blown away! I can’t begin to figure it out because I am sure you can’t produce one condom for less than $0.01. Can you? I am guessing there must be some sort of government subsidy going on and they charge the $0.15 just to stop people from buying them for water balloons.

I just phoned my local Shoppers Drug Mart for a price check on Trojan Magnum Condoms 12-pack. They were $9.95. That is $0.83 Canadian per condom!

So 3 condoms for $0.006 becomes $0.002 per condom. Convert that to CUC by dividing it by 25 it becomes $0.00008 per condom. Times that by 1.4 to convert to Canadian and you have $0.000112 per condom. Compare $0.000112 to the Trojan Condoms at $0.83 that is a 7410% mark-up! Maybe I should take him up on his offer to sell a crate of condoms in Canada LOL!

I’d like to see myself explaining that one at customs!