Dakar: the people

This past weekend I headed to Dakar.  Overall it was a great time.  There was just one blight to my time there: the people I encountered.

OK, so some of that is for shock value.  It’s only partially true to begin with, and I don’t impute it to everyone in Senegal because my small sample set consists almost entirely of people targeting me as a tourist.  However, it is mostly true within that sample set.

Soccer in the Goree square.

Let’s get the bad out of the way so that it ends in sunshine.  “Accosted” might be the best word to describe the approach of the Senegalese I met to trying to sell/get something from me, and they are much less straightforward than elsewhere.  Most other places they all perk up when a white guy goes by, but if you tell them “no” they will entreat you a little (“just a look!”) and then lay it to rest.  Not here.  I was physically pulled by people trying to get me into their shops.  I was followed for blocks on multiple occasions.  I was asked why I was being so rude (a guilt trip -- all I was doing was saying “no thanks”).  When one person opened a conversation by saying that I shouldn’t talk to anyone else in the market because “others push, but I don’t push,” I immediately knew I was in trouble.  People start up normal conversations that I’m sure they would have been willing to carry on forever with the sole purpose of asking for money or a sale from their new friend.

There were really two things that aggravated me most about this approach:

1) Their numerous plays to conversation/wanting to be a friend/wanting to learn about you meant that you were very suspicious of any conversation, which poisons things for me because chatting with the locals is the fastest way to get the inside scoop.

2) Their limitless persistence and the unlimited guilt trip ploys made it come across like they believe that the money was theirs and that I was wronging them by not giving it.  (I don’t think they really think that, but that’s what you might think if you had no context.)

 The first instance was going to dinner the first night.  The place I initially aimed for was closed, and a guy met me and offered to take me to another good place.  With a dozen open-air places that all looked the same, I figured that it was at least better than random chance.  I thought he was with the restaurant, but he was actually on his own and sold art.  Basically he directed people there and they let him hawk art to their customers.  Initially I invited him to join me for dinner since he seemed nice enough and I wasn’t going to be talking to anyone else otherwise.  He got a beer, I got dinner, and we did have an interesting conversation.  He worked in that he was an artist and the got his works, and when I told him I wasn’t planning to take anything home he just made one more attempt.  He got up a couple of times to talk to others who came in, but otherwise we talked.  In the end he told me he needed cab money home, and while I didn’t buy that at all, he did end up with a beer and “cab money” in exchange for being a nice conversation partner and answering my questions about Senegal.

The first bad instance was on the ferry to Goree Island when a guy came up to me and asked me if I had been to Senegal before, saying I looked familiar.  Uh huh.  He wanted to be my guide and I told him I’d prefer to go it alone.  His mistake in asking if I’d been to Senegal before, which I could answer with a declarative no.

The next guy caught me coming off the boat – or more correctly he was the most persistent of the many people who did.  When I told him no, he followed me and asked how I could come to the island and not want a guide for the history.  When I answered that I came specifically to observe alone rather than engage and take a tour, he was not placated.  His mistake was in asking about my internal motivation, something which he can ridicule but cannot question.

The next guy caught me as I was leaving the ferry back on the mainland and was the best of them all.  He was from Freetown and a native English speaker, and started the conversation with a “hey remember me?” but was smart enough to use a generic “back there at the dock, I was talking to the guy in the orange shirt” type answer.  He professed to want to walk and talk to me because he rarely had the chance to talk to other English speakers.  After telling him very politely that no offense but I wanted to be alone, he continued to walk and talk for about another 10 blocks.  At one point he asked what was wrong: “See that point where I told you goodbye?  That was there, this is here, and you’re still with me.”  He kept telling me why he liked talking to people and then skillfully shifted the conversation to “…and I like to get to really know people and then hear their heart, and talk about our situations…” and then in some way that was truly artful threw in a request for money without absolutely destroying the moment he had created.  I had to give him props, even if not money.  His only mistake was his opening line, which made me want to get rid of him as soon as we met.

The final guy was in a market.  A guy followed me and after I repeatedly said I was not going to buy anything, he told me he would take me to where they make everything, so I decided I was willing to watch that and give him a few bucks for it.  When I tried to leave the guy who had repeated a dozen times that he was “not pushy like the others” pushed really hard (despite the money I had already given).  This time it was my mistake: I believed that if I repeatedly and clearly said upfront that I wouldn’t buy anything, they would actually listen and wouldn’t push as hard.  I ended up getting rid of him only when I left the entire market and walked across a boulevard.

With that out of the way, I enjoyed talking with the first art guy at the restaurant and had another great conversation at the end of my Goree Island stay.  I was sitting under a tree in the main plaza just watching everything, and this guy asked if I was OK.  I told him yes and that I was just enjoying it, and we ended up talking.  When he pointed to a shop and said he owned it the defenses came up, but this time we really did just talk – about the economy, politics, and life in Senegal.  Refreshing.

One thing the last guy said was that tourist season didn’t really start until October.  Combined with my own observations that I was the only white guy at the restaurant and in the market, I imagine some of what I experienced was a combination of extra-desperate sellers and no other tourists to share the heat.

A couple other stories:

There is a last story about the art guy from the first night.  I invited him to come sit with me and have a beer and he did order one – a quart beer – but then put it on the ground and hid it behind a piece of his art.  He explained that since Senegal is a mostly Muslim country, it was better for him to drink it discreetly.  Later he took it, went behind a building, and drank the whole thing pretty quickly.  When he returned he started talking with someone else as he took out paper and something else and rolled either a cigarette or a joint.  I was upwind and so I couldn’t tell which, but it’s not like they don’t sell cigarettes on the street.  Either way, I was amused that he had to drink his beer in hiding but could smoke openly.

The guy he was talking to was also my waiter.  He didn’t speak much English (French is the first language there).  He introduced himself as “Ass,” and when I looked surprised he turned around where he pointed confirmed that his name was Ass.  Obviously not the first time someone has been nonplussed by his name.