Yachts and Pirogues: The Paradox of Development in Urban Africa

It had been a long day of strolling around almost every walkable corner of Western Dakar, Senegal, with my friend Shelby, and all I really wanted to do was sit on a bench in a nice, grassy Rittenhouse Park-esque part of the city and smoke the Cuban cigar I had bought earlier that day. A comfy bench, good company, an expensive yet deliciously unpatriotic vice, and a pleasant view of what could easily have stood in for any Western vacation city were all I was in the mood for. Shelby and I found our park, we found our bench, I dug out my Cuban, and we sat. And no sooner did we sit, than we were descended upon, like the hapless heroes of the Hitchcock classic The Birds, not by pecking pigeons and psychotic sparrows, but by greedy Gerebous and belligerent belt-salesmen.

In all fairness, we should have seen this coming. This was my fourth day in Dakar (my extended pit-stop on the way back to the USA for my older sister’s wedding) and so far, one of the most notable differences I had observed between here and my more familiar capital city of Bamako, Mali, was the heightened number of strangers trying to get their hands on my money, and the aggressiveness with which they tried. In Bamako, I try as hard as I can to avoid places like the Artisan Market, where salesmen will call you out, occasionally using physical force, to get you into their shop, and then try to make you feel guilty for not wanting to buy anything. It’s the sort of experience that can be easily ignored with a good sense of humor for a short time, but the more the salesmen harangue you, imploring you to buy their goods if you so much as look in their direction, the more you become completely turned off from even trying to buy anything from them. And as if the shopkeepers were not enough, you have the Gerebous, youngsters studying Islam under an Iman who sends them into town to sing prayers to passersby and beg for money, and who are drawn to white people like mosquitoes to a bug-zapper.

All these things, you will find just about every day in Bamako, and their prevalence is magnified to absurd proportions in Dakar. Shopkeepers were even more aggressive and even offensive (though I’m sure “Young boy, buy my things now!” was merely ignorant word choice). The streets outside the shopping areas were no safer as random folks on the street peddling dolls, snacks, or “real” Gucci shirts would follow us for blocks, lowering their prices every time we told them that we were not interested rather than leaving.

So by the time my much-needed break in the heart of the prettiest part of downtown came, the last thing I wanted was to be interrupted by anyone whose only English consisted of “Five dollars! Very nice! Me, I love America.” And yet, sure enough, no sooner did I sit down and light up my Romeo Y Julieta than a belt salesman, about 17 years of age, sat down next to me and offered me what he assured me was a great price for a real Versace belt. I politely turned him down in the most articulate and clear French I could muster: "Non, monsieur." He continued to offer me the belt, and I continued to respond, but he was grating on my nerves and I was running out of French vocabulary. I asked him if he spoke English and he gave an awkward, unconfident nod to the affirmative. So I asked him if he thought I was an idiot, since I had told him repeatedly to leave me alone and still he pestered me. Misjudging my sardonically calm tone for positivity, he gave another, more confident nod "yes." "Really? You know English? And you say I'm stupid? And you still try to sell me a belt?" A thoughtful pause. "Very nice belt. Dix-mil francs. No expensive!"

Seeing that further conversation would be no less futile, I turned to Shelby and asked what she thought. What is it that makes Dakar and Bamako so different? Dakar is clearly a nicer city, a wealthier city, and I had been spending the last few days taking in what could easily be Bamako's Extreme Makeover, Western-Globalization Edition. Numerous tourist attractions, nightlife venues and beaches make the city beautiful and fun for locals and out-of-towners alike, especially those who want an "Africa-Lite" sort of vacation (not everyone has the adventurous constitution of a Peace Corps Volunteer). Gorgeous beaches and luxury hotels are easy to come by, and there is a plethora of restaurants and shopping venues for anyone with some money to spend. In fact, there is very little that you can't find in any Western vacation city - Bamako it ain't. The longer I stayed in Dakar, the more I wished my country of service was more like it.

As my friend the belt-seller continued to try to make his sale, lowering his price to 20% of the original, it began to occur to me that for someone to be this desperate to sell a belt to some tourists, one would have to be in pretty dire straits. He had been sitting with me for over ten minutes by now and showed no sign of letting up anytime soon. He's just trying to make some money for himself, I reasoned. In a city this expensive, it must be a lot tougher being poor than in a city like Bamako. In Bamako, poverty is rampant, suburbs look like slums, and the nice parts of town are few and far between. There's a lot less money there, but it's also a lot easier to live in poverty. If an urban Malian is short on cash, they can hit up a lady on the street who will be selling a filling plate of rice and sauce for about 50 cents, and these kinds of eateries are ubiquitous. In Dakar, I did not find a single meal to eat less than three times that amount, not even so much as a child selling froufrou, little fried-millet-powder "donut holes." Going by my theory that food is one of the most accurate barometers of the socio-economic climate of a culture, we can surmise that in Mali, plentiful cheap food reflects the abundance of urban poor who will settle for cheap rice and sauce dishes, and those unsatisfied by tradtional fare can hit up the Broadway Cafe for club sandwiches and milkshakes. Contrarily, cheap and easy food is less of an option in Dakar, reflecting the wealth and comfort of the city's inhabitants.

Does this mean that everyone in Dakar is rich? Far from it. What it means is that the economic gap between the rich and poor of the city is wide to Grand-Canyon proportions. The wealthy make out perfectly well, and the poor are almost too poor to exist. Which is why they stoop to such low levels of shameless begging to try to sell their goods. In Mali, a single sale makes little difference in the long run, since a tiny amount of money can go a long way, and the strong Malian sense of family and community means that each individual has a strong support structure to lean on. In Dakar, a merchant must sell or starve, and the city overall has less of the community feel of Mali, appearing, at least superficially, to be more of a Western-style, individualistic place.

There is an expression used in Mali that roughly means "We are all in the same boat." People share, not only their problems, but their solutions as well, with the whole community. In Dakar, it seems that there are two boats: the pirogue and the yacht. The wealthy of the city live in the yacht, the lap of luxury, while the poor are in a smaller, less stable boat. They have no connection to the rich other than that they depend on them for their own income.

When all this occurred to me, I felt much more sympathy for the poor belt-seller with me. He was stuck on his figurative small pirogue, navigating waters made for much larger ships. In Mali, he would have been doing just fine, and so would I. If I bought or declined a belt from a street merchant, life would go on as before and nobody would notice. It would be the difference of the merchant having meat with his dinner that night. In the comparative paradise of Dakar, among the Barbie mansions and muscle beaches, I realized that as much fun as I was having, I really did miss the onion sauce, joking cousins, and ever-present friendliness that gives Bamako the charm that only the truly impovershed can afford.