That'll be 30gazillion CFA francs, Mr. Toubap

Many months ago, I drew a cartoon with Boubacar offering me a shoe for “R500, with bargain”. It turns out that was only the tip of the price negotiating iceberg.

Negotiating prices in Senegal was not as simple as my previous bargaining experiences in Taiwan. In fact, I was useless. There were three main reasons why:

1) I can’t speak Wolof. Contrary to what I wrote in the previous post, Wolof is not easy to pick up. So in actuality, Linda did all of the bargaining during my trip.
2) Senegalese people practice price negotiating for all of their life, and are already better than me when they start primary school. I first realised just how early the Senegalese start when I was watching TV with Linda and her six-year-old sister, Souad. This is, word for word, the conversation that they had:

Linda: Sousou, one more cartoon, and then I’m changing the channel.
Souad: No!
L: Yes!
S: Five more.
L: One.
S: Four.
L: Two
S: Three
L: Three, including this one.
S: Fine.
L: Done!

And then they went back to watching Peppa Pig’s dad flip pancakes.

3) I am white. Unless you’re applying to college or trying to hide in a flock of ravens, being white is very rarely a handicap. Yet when you’re buying stuff in Senegal, it is, because salesmen automatically assume that you have money (which makes sense; you bought the plane ticket), and hike the price up 500%. They also salivate when they see you.

This was most obvious for one good in particular: taxis. We frequently had to wave taxis away because they refused to take the fare down.

We did however have one secret weapon up our sleeves (asides from Linda’s years of practice and fluent Wolof): Rima Tahini. For every inflationary percentage point that I had on taxi prices, she added a deflationary one. To explain why, I have drawn a diagram of what goes on in the typical Senegalese taxi driver’s head when he sees me and Rima:

The taxi fare seesaw faces pressure from two sides. On the left is an oblivious white person with backpack, most likely containing the crown jewels, gold bullion, or both. He provides huge incentive to charge at prices normally associated with private jets and space tourism. On the right is a pretty girl, and her knees are showing. She provides huge incentive to forget the left side of the seesaw ever existed and pursue marriage.

Faced with this choice, most taxi drivers went back to offering normal rates, but some did in fact ask if they could have Rima. Every time, she had the same reaction. She would laugh in their faces, and then return to her blackberry to continue texting Malick.


And now a bonus cartoon about bargaining that I definitely think ALA should use for publicity: