Making change in Senegal is a constant battle. When you go to the ATM and take out money, it comes in 5,000 and 10,000 CFA bills. Unfortunately, the most common expenses in Dakar are things like snacks and bus fares, so like 25 to 250 CFA. Presenting a 5000 to a guy in a boutique for your Biskrem cookies would be like walking up to a vending machine with a fifty-dollar bill. The guy won’t take your money because he won’t be able to make the change, which means no delicious Biskrem for you. This means that having 10,000 CFA (about $20) and having no money at all are often basically the same situation.
The easiest ways to break your “gros billets” are to go to places that actually have cash registers, like supermarkets, gas station convenience stores, and western-style restaurants. In the WARC environs, this means going to My Shop (a convenience store/pizza place), La Gondole (a chain restaurant that does burgers, pizza, paninis, crepes, etc), or a grocery store that we don’t know the actual name of but that we called the Toubab Shop (it caters to all the foreigners living in the Fann neighborhood, which is where half the foreign embassies in Dakar are located). These places are nice because that’s where we get all our comfort food, but they are way more expensive than any Senegalese establishment, meaning that breaking your big bills requires a bit of a spending spree. We’re always looking for better ways to get small change.
This obsession with change, coupled with a strategically parked taxi and my own incredible stupidity, lead to my loss of 15,000 CFA ($30).
I was sitting at My Shop by myself having a snack before I started walking home. A guy came and sat down at the table with me and started talking to me. He said he recognized me because he owned the boutique next to my house. His name was Ousman. He said he was at My Shop because he needed change. I started to actually participate in the conversation because needing change is something that I, too, can understand. As it turns out, he has the opposite problem with change. He gets all his money in little coins and bills but in order to pick up what he orders from the grande boutique, he needs to pay in big denominations. He told met that I should come by whenever I need change because he would make it for me, which, to me, the idiot, seemed like a very generous offer from one neighbor to another. I should have known, however, that that was totally bizarre. The idea that a boutique owner would be happy to be presented with large bills is completely laughable.
I got up to go back home, and he said he would come with me. For once, it didn’t bother me to have a companion, because he was nice enough, apparently knew my family, and hadn’t yet asked me any of the usual obnoxious questions. We were having a pleasant conversation about my family’s maids, who he knows because they would come into his boutique all the time. He said that Tening (who vanished about two weeks ago and has been replaced by Effie) went back to her village, which is somewhere near Thiès, but that she would be back. Then, he asked me if I had any big bills on me that I needed to get change for, and I was like, uh, yeah, actually. He was like, great, I’ll take them in here to the grande boutique because I need to pay for an order I put in and the guy here will make the change for me. He seemed really happy that I was going to help him make the change that he needed. He kept telling me that I was really nice and that he would give me some free phone credit because I was being so nice to him.
We got to the grand boutique, and he asked me how much I had one me. I had three 5,000s. He told me to stay here on the corner while I go inside with your money. I didn’t quite just hand the money over, and he didn’t quite just snatch it out of my hands, but somehow he ended up with my cash and I ended up waiting on the corner.
I stood on the corner for a few minutes thinking that there was no way he was going to come out of the boutique, but then he did and my faith was restored a little. He then spoke very very fast to me and I didn’t catch everything he said, but I understood that we needed to go to the bank and then go back. So we got in a taxi and went to the bank down the street, where he opened the door to the ATM and was said, “Go ahead.” I asked him what he wanted me to do, and he said, “Take out 100,000 francs.” I refused and said that I thought he was the one who had business here. He said that the guy at the grand boutique will only make change for 100,000 francs. If you give me that, I’ll go back with it and get the change for you. I said no, there was no way I was going to take that much money out (that’s $200 US), give me back the money I already gave you. He said that he had left it at the grand boutique, but that we could go back and get it. I’m not sure he was being entirely truthful about that because I could see a suspicious flash of green in the breast pocket of his shirt, but I said okay. We got back into the taxi and drove half way down the street before he said, “Or, I can just go back to the ATM, take out 15,000 francs and give it to you.” This was a totally stupid idea, but he had gotten the taxi driver to pull over in such a way that he could get out of the front seat, but I couldn’t open the door to the back seat without cracking it into another car. He hopped out of the taxi, told me to wait, and disappeared down the street, leaving me trapped and sure that my money had vanished with him.
When the car next to us finally moved, I got out and walked back down the street to the bank, but sure enough, Ousman was gone. I went back to the taxi to explain to the driver that the guy who had hired him was a thief and not coming back, but he didn’t understand French and my Wolof is totally inadequate for situations like that, so I abandoned him. I felt bad, but I was annoyed that I had just lost all the money and I was not going to pay for the taxi that was all but an accessory to the crime.
When I got home that day, I asked Danny if he knew of a guy named Ousman who worked in the boutique next to our house, and he said no. It then occurred to me that all of the things that he seemed to know about my family I either supplied to him, like the names of the maids, or I didn’t know and couldn’t have verified, like what happened to Tening, so he very easily could have been making it all up as he went along.
So yeah. I’m pretty embarrassed that I let this happen to me, but now I’ll know for next time, right?
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