A Tale of Two Taxis (or maybe even three or four...)

Sarah and I each take taxis from time to time, either when the other has the car, of if we’re going somewhere that’s a little complicated to get to or hard to park in. What I love about taxis here—and what I never fail to point out to visitors, especially if they’re from New York or somewhere else where people use taxis a lot—is that here in Dakar, you don’t hail taxis. Taxis hail you.

Taxi drivers here seem to “troll” for customers. They drive looking for people to take somewhere. They slow down at intersections, crawl through crowded areas, and honk at potential clients. Since prices are all negotiable, many taximen tend to target people they think they can get to pay more. It probably comes as no surprise that we Toubabs (the Wolof word for white people) fall into that category. Taxis honk, slow down, flash their lights, and even pull over when they see me walking down the street. In the one block walk from our house to the main road, a typical morning will see three or four taxis hailing me, even though I walk the three or four blocks to work.

Now, I could take a detour into a discussion of what it means to be a Toubab here in Senegal. I could write about the internalization of racism and colonialism, how it feels to be constantly reminded that I’m from the group that holds power in a global sense. We could get into how I imagine it must feel to know that truth from the other end, and the sense of desperation one must feel to seek out the rich foreigner so that the day’s earnings increase by some percentage or another.

But I’m not going to do that.

Rather, I’m going to just tell two stories about taxis that hailed me each in a rather extraordinary way.

First, about a year ago, I was walking home from work, when a taxi honked once, twice, three times, flashed its lights and then pulled over. At first, I just ignored him, but then I turned and looked, and trying to be polite said, “no, merci.” But just as I was about to continue walking, and before the taxi had pulled back into traffic, a second cab pulled over: “Taxi, monsieur?” So I started to explain to the second driver that I didn’t need a taxi, that’s why I said no to the first taxi, the one that was now honking at the second one to get out of his way. Just then a third taxi slowed down, honked, and pulled over. Catching me in mid-eyeroll, the third taxi man leaned out the window and shouted, “Peter! Ça va?” Turns out it was Cheikh Ndione, the younger brother of my co-worker Aly, who I’ve known nearly all my time here in Senegal, but hadn’t seen since the previous holiday. I went over, shook his hand and struck up a brief conversation, while the other two cab drivers looked on in disbelief. “I though you said you didn’t need a taxi,” one of them finally said. To which Cheikh replied in Wolof: “he doesn’t need a taxi, he just lives across the street!” But it wasn’t until Cheikh drove off and I walked on that the other two pulled back into traffic, finally convinced I didn’t need a taxi.

The second story first happened just a couple of days ago. I walked out of the house to get some eggs and bread at Mamadou’s little shop across the street. No sooner had I closed the gate behind me than a taxi, spotting me from the main road a full block away, honked, pulled over and gave me an inquisitive face as if to ask: “taxi?” I ignored him as best I could, although I must say I still tend to turn and look when someone honks at me. I continue across our narrow street to the shop, where I told Mamadou’s nephew, Mohamed, what I needed. As we were talking, behind me pulled up a shiny yellow taxi, and the driver, having positioned his car exactly between our house and the boutique, honked again. “Taxi, monsieur?” he asked, sweeping his hand across the driver’s door like one of the women on “the Price is Right” to show me how nice his cab was. Mohamed started laughing out loud, shaking his head and then shouting to the driver, “Taxi? Does he need a taxi? He lives across the street!!” We later joked that I could have just gotten in the back door on the driver’s side, and then just get out on the passenger side, asking how much I owed him….

If there are lessons I learned from these two tales, I think they are these:

1. It's a good thing that here in Dakar I can find a taxi pretty much anytime I need one (and even when I don’t).
2. It’s good to make eye contact with the taximen who honk at me, just in case one is an old friend I haven’t seen in a while; and
3. I need to take a cue from Mohamed, lighten up and laugh a little about all this. After all, they’re just trying to do their jobs, I am a good (and likely higher paying) client, and like it or not, I do stand out here.

Jamm ak Teranga (Peace and Hospitality),
Peter

Comments

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