To take us around to our meetings we had hired two 14-passenger vans from a travel company for the week. We assumed that the vans came with licensed drivers and the permits required of commercial vehicles. This was a mistake. During the first few days we were pulled over by the police a couple times and discovered that our drivers (and/or van) lacked the proper license to drive in Dakar. Apparently there is a license to drive between cities and another to drive within cities. A 1,000 CFA ($2) bribe to the cop usually cleared up this problem and we would move along.
Things got more serious as the week went on. One day we came out of a meeting at USAID only to discover that our driver was gone. Tracking him down took 30 minutes, during which time we sat baking in the sun, sweating in our dress suits. The next day we got pulled over twice within a few blocks and both times our driver was charged with not having the proper license to transport tourists. Slightly larger bribes took care of these problems, but were still rather annoying.
During the last few days our drivers became more wary and tried to avoid main roads, where cops would see our white, foreign faces and instantly think of dollar (or in this case, CFA) signs. Although sticking to side streets was a good idea in theory, it was flawed in practice. Our drivers, who we already knew were more familiar with the roads around Dakar than in Dakar, ended up just getting themselves lost. One driver was winding his way through a small neighborhood when he realized that he missed his turn. Instead of doing a U-turn he simply stopped the car in the middle of the rather busy road, threw the van in reverse and hit the gas. Unfortunately there was a taxi not 3 feet behind us. We've been debating how to describe this accident. Did our driver "rear-end himself"? Did he "front-end someone"? Either way, it was pretty funny, but also unnerving, since we didn't know if the taxi driver was going to freak out, and, seeing our white, foreign faces, demand a lot of money in compensation. Luckily the taxi driver just stepped out of his car, shouted a few key expletives at our driver, checked out the damage on his car, decided it was minimal and went his merry way. Thank god we hit a banged-up taxi and not a brand new BMW.
To cap off the day, on our way home we were waiting at a red light when the traffic cop in the intersection decided that he needed to check us out. Instead of telling us to pull over he insisted that we remain parked in the middle of the intersection. Now, driving on a busy street in the developing world is dangerous enough, but sitting in the middle of a chaotic intersection is just asking for trouble. After 5 or 10 minutes of getting honked at we pulled over to the side of the road and the cop came over. For an indeterminate reason the cop confiscated our driver's license and insisted that he drop us off and then come back to collect it (i.e. pay to get it back) later. We never found up if he did, or if he just decided that, given all his tickets and accidents, driving was just not the profession for him.
There were of course the standard mechanical problems, with one van breaking down on consecutive days. The second time, as it was parked on along the road, waiting to be fixed, it had a boot put on it by the police. Tracking the officer down and getting it removed took longer than the actually fixing of the van.
Given that we were only driving around Dakar for 4.5 days, it seems like we had a disproportionately large number of transportation-related incidents. Maybe next time we should travel by motorcycle. After all, nothing bad can happen with that, right?
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