What decade is this?

There are lots of contrasts between life here and at home, but one of the biggest is the use of ledger books (okay, carbon paper too).

• Bill’s New Vision driver picks him up in the morning and takes him to the paper. At the gate the driver has to sign a ledger book.


• When we set up a bank account, the entire transaction was done via a ledger book.


• The other day we went to a movie (The Simpson’s – the Ugandans did not laugh, but we did), and the ticket taker made a note of the ticket in a ledger book.


• We went to the post office to pick up some books Kate thoughtfully sent and our errand was noted in not one, but two ledger books, each at different tables in the same room. (The picture is of a post office ledger book.)


• At our neighborhood grocery you pay a deposit on beer and coke bottles, then when you return them the clerk carefully writes down that you did so in a ledger book, what kind of beverage you returned, and how much you should get back (or have deducted from your new purchase). Then he fills out a receipt in a little book and gives it to you with a carbon copy.


• At the entrance to every national park, you have to sign a ledger book.
  

I am doing some work helping set up a library at an orphanage. Eric is coming so we thought it would be great to have him build a little database to record the books. But the woman helping me, a British professor who teaches in New York and who has lots of experience in Uganda, suggested -- well, you know, using a ledger book.