Car Rapide, mentira!

After our deliciously cheap lunch we tried getting a cab to Lompoul the next leg in our trip. We asked for a cab and a guy told us he would take us for 10,000 F CFA (about US$22) which was so obviously ridiculous that when we asked the next person and they said 400 F CFA we both heard 4,000 and Caitlin was about to start screaming before she started laughing. The first guy had quoted us 25 the normal price! When we got to the car we realized why it was only 400. It wasn’t a car but a car rapide which in Senegal means a beat-up old van outfitted to fit as many people with as few amenities as possible and painted very colorfully with mostly religious quotes and symbols like “God is Great,” and “Thank You God” although the best one I ever saw passed by once when I was at the Mobil station. Instead of a quote from the Koran dedicating the car to God, this one was a vehicle of praise for Al Pacino. The owner must be a real fan of the

Godfather and Scarface. The car rapide we rode that day had two benches along the sides and one freestanding one down the middle. After the lady breastfeeding her child on the bus got off to let us on, I had the pleasure of sitting with my knees almost to my chest and someone else’s knees knocking on the back of my shoulders. Then of course the guy wanted to be slick with us and charge us more money than he had told us. After some of the hottest 45 minutes of my life we got off at Lompoul Village.

Meet the Chief

Lompoul Village has a sign that announces who its chief is that is almost as big as the village. After getting dropped off we were welcomed to the village by one of the women who lives there, who I guess is the unofficial guide. She spoke decent French and encouraged us to say hi to the chief. The chief was a regular-looking old Senegalese man who was lying on a matt on the floor wearing an inexpensive boubou and holding a chapelet in his hands. When we tried to greet him and his people in Wolof he got really upset and told us he was Peul. “Sow” couldn’t I see the family name printed in big letters on the sign welcoming us to the village. That is a Peul last name; until that moment I had never heard of it. After sitting awkwardly for a few minutes I remembered that the Lonely Planet guide has some brief section with phrases in each of the major native languages of Senegal. Caitlin and them had a great time when we tried to pronounce simple phrases like “Thank you,” “How are you?” “Good morning” and “Hello” in Peul. After this we had some attaya or traditional Senegalese tea (of course it comes from China). They make it super sweet and hot, and then they want you to drink it quickly so they use the same shotglass to pass tea back to the others. Although you drink it fast, they spend forever making it which turns it into more elaborate ritual than your typical morning tea. Our ride was so long in getting there that we were actually able to finish our tea.

dunes dude, dunes

Dunes are cool. A large 4WD truck came to pick us up and take us into the dunes. The driver was a maniac who ran through the dirt roads in this huge truck at a ridiculous speed. But the most disorienting thing was that we were driving toward the dunes but everything was nice and green. Where was the desert? And then all of the sudden we saw some tents and a lot of sand. I spent the next 24 hours barefoot and getting over my phobia of sand. It was beautiful. I sat and contemplated life while the sun set over the sand mountains as Caitlin sprayed herself head to toe in bug spray.

Dancing with White Folks

We were late to that evening’s festivities. Some of the male employees (we only saw one woman on staff) were drumming and dancing for all of the Spanish tourists staying there (and I don’t mean Spanish in the ghetto sense, they weren’t Puerto Rican, they were actually from Spain). Then of course they started pulling all of us to dance. So we danced and made fools of ourselves like all the others. It’s one of those moments when you are making fun of people for doing something that you too could easily be accused of, i.e. hypocrisy. Afterward our lovely drummers and dancers served us dinner (people in Africa are so nice!) Over dinner I met the other guide. The first guide was the one dancing super flashy. He spoke Spanish poorly but tried to make up for it with enthusiasm like when we were waiting for the bathroom and he congratulated my dancing by exclaiming that “Bailar es muy bueno!” I got the feeling he was the kind of gregarious dude that figured out that if he just danced and smiled for white folks he could get them to give him a lot of money. On the other hand, the other guide spoke great Spanish using words like “transgredido” that I don’t think I have ever spoken, and explaining concepts like a comparison between the Sereer’s more egalitarian social structure and the Wolof’s rigid caste system in Spanish, something that I could never do. I got the feeling he would rather have been studying Cervantes, but had to reconcile himself to the demeaning reality that he could make more money leading groups of middle-aged Spanish folks through his country. Dinner was good though.

Biggest Penis in Senegal

Our serenity was rudely interrupted when we had to pay for our stay. Caitlin had gotten one price on the phone when she booked the room and now we were being charged more money. What was worse is that the guy we had to deal was the most intransigent negotiator I have encountered out here. He acted like he had the biggest penis in Senegal. He kept saying that, that was the price, as if anything has a fixed price in this country. Eventually Caitlin busted out some French battle rhymes on him and he agreed to cut the price. By then it was noon, and my fall into love with the desert abruptly hit the floor. It was hot as fuck. There was no shade. There was no cooler ocean water to enter. There was no breeze. Instead there were strong gusts that blew sand sprinkles everywhere. There was nowhere to be but inside the tents where it was even hotter. I was done with the desert.

Teranga my ass

We got dropped back off at the village the following afternoon. We had some tea as we waited for a bus or cab to pass by. As it became increasingly clear that no bus or cab would be coming we were forced to negotiate with the second biggest penis in Senegal. It was the most one-sided negotiation I have had here. We tried every trick short of begging. We walked away, acted angry, acted reasonable, and he did not budge at all from his price. I didn’t feel like spending a night in the middle of carajoland so we grudgingly paid to several times the normal price to ride a car that was being repaired as we negotiated.

Tourism is a major industry in Senegal. Even though it is the rainy season (and therefore low season for tourism) the country is overrun by white people. Teranga is the Wolof term for the traditional value of hospitality. Seemingly everyone here prides themselves in their country’s hospitality. Umm, I am sorry to inform them but their country can be downright hostile to tourists. I am cynical about the whole idea of “welcoming” cultures as mere marketing. Maybe Senegal is as kind to strangers as they say it is, and we just got caught on a bad day or in a bad region or dealing with a bad bunch of Senegalese, but I doubt it. I guess it could be worse, like they could have kidnapped us for ransom, but it could have also been better.

Back in Kebemer we got mobbed as soon as we got out of the car. We asked for a car to Dakar and started getting quoted ridiculous prices ($40, $50, $60 when the price getting there was $6). Then at one point I negotiated with this guy who didn’t even have a car. Often people here will make deal with clients and then cut a cheaper deal with the real driver or vendor, so it isn’t weird to see someone negotiate on someone else’s behalf. But who was this guy negotiating on behalf of? We were lucky to run into another group of toubabs, four French university students who were traveling around Senegal. The problem then was that we were eight foreigners and the cars are only supposed to fit seven. The drivers wanted more money so that they could bribe the police in case they stopped. We in turn argued that we would bribe the police if there were any problems and insisted on a lower price (that the police could be bribed was taken for granted). So we overpaid and got in a sept-place to Dakar, or so I thought until we got dropped off in Thies. We were again forced to deal with the same harassment, ridiculous prices and general confusion in Thies. So after overpaying a third time we were finally on our way to Dakar. Once in the city I got off near my house and Caitlin and I performed our fifth and final round of transportation negotiation. My odyssey was over shortly thereafter, but Caitlin had to deal with even more shit before getting home. The cab driver—as they tend to do here—lied about knowing where he was going and when Caitlin attempted to direct him he got angry because he thought that they were going further than agreed to. Then it just gets bizarre. Fearing that Cailtin wouldn’t pay, the cabdriver grabbed her bag and wouldn’t let go until a random stranger intervened. Even then she didn’t get dropped off at home. Now I know that I can never let a woman go home alone in this city. I had a great time in Lompoul, and the ride in retrospect was not as bad as it could have been. Looking at the events positively, at least we did get home (didn’t have to spend the night in some way-out-there village), we had the money, the roads were decent, the cars didn’t break down, etc. It could have been worse, but it was also the first time in three months here when I questioned whether I really wanted to stay in Senegal for so long.

It’s Kinda Efficient

The traffic out here is pretty bad. Dakar is the kind of city where you find yourself in a traffic jam on a Wednesday night at 3 AM and you wonder just where the fuck it is that people are going. Last Tuesday morning I was heading toward the Mobil station. Even though it was after the morning rush hour (yall know I wouldn’t get up that early) there was still a lot of gridlock. If you have negotiated a good price with the cabdriver and he really can’t afford to sit there in traffic your driver will instantly transform into a Dakar Rally driver and veer off-road to try to skip ahead of the traffic jam. I have seen them do this many times (including once when we drove through a construction zone) but this is the first time the driver got caught. A crossing-guard with large white gloves whistled us down. And in less time than it took to me write Caitlin a text message to tell her that I would be late cause my cab was getting a ticket, we were off.

It’s common sense that corruption and inefficiency are synonymous. Except that instead of sitting there for several minutes as the officer wrote a ticket, the driver and officer were able to strike a bargain that worked for both of them that seems quite efficient to me. The driver got to pay less than he would have paid for the ticket, the officer was able to get augment his pitifully low salary with some tax-free income, the driver was penalized for his infraction and traffic kept moving.