It is a well-known
fact that the traveller must be aware of the laws of his or her host country
and, failing to observe said rules, must be prepared to incur the wrath of the
local authorities. As such, I have refrained from drinking on the street,
streaking through town, beating up members of the police force and various
other things which can land one in hot water in Senegal. Sometimes, however,
the smaller details of the law can escape you.
Having finished a
project at work which had taken a long time and then been delayed several days
by poorly-timed and incessant power cuts, we celebrated in style by buying a
couple of cheap bottles of wine (which incidentally, considering they say
“bottled in Dakar” on the labels and bear no indication of their origin, hence
probably somewhere like Belarus or Tajikistan, are very good) and having them
with cake.
Living it up, Ziguinchor style
Two of the more uncontrolled of us (namely Louise
and myself) decided that this was not sufficient and wandered off to the local
shop to pick up more. Unfortunately, it was half past midnight by this point
and the shop was rather predictably closed but a helpful bystander pointed us
up the road to a bar where we could purchase takeaway bottles. I asked for a
couple of bottles, Louise sat down and ordered a beer, and so I got a beer as
well. All went well for about 10 minutes, chatting with some guys at the bar on
topics which I no longer remember but were surely very interesting, when a
group of rather heavily armed men in uniform burst in. Quite why they needed
portable rocket launchers or some such just to go around bars checking peoples’
IDs is beyond me, but the upshot of the story is that I had left my ID at home
and was unceremoniously marched off to a pick-up waiting outside and was driven
off to jail. Louise is always a willing soldier to help out those in trouble
and took a taxi home to pick my passport up before chasing our truck to the
jail. She arrived before me as we had stopped to raid every other bar in town
and, by the time 17 of us lawbreakers came through the gates of Nema police
station, Louise had already been carted off into a room and chatted up by friendly
Gendarmes. I saw the bright lights of freedom before me as Louise gave my
passport to the guy in the office but, rather than shaking my hand and sending
me on my way with a smile as I had hoped, he sat down and started watching
football on TV. Louise’s desperate pleas of “I’m tired, please let him out”
fell on deaf ears and at 3am she was persuaded to leave the premises.
What came next was probably
not the most luxurious night I’ve ever spent – 17 guys stuffed into a room
about 7m² with a concrete floor and one of the world’s smelliest toilets poking
its stinking tentacles into our accommodation for the night. Putting myself
into an improbable foetus-like position and using my flipflops as a pillow I
somehow managed to get half an hour’s sleep before a fellow jailbird
accidentally sat on my head in the dark, and that was all the sleep I managed
to get that night. We eventually got to morning where I had high hopes. Louise
had been promised that I would be out by 8am. The Senegalese police run on
African time though and the officers responsible for our cases didn’t even
arrive until 9am and then began a painstaking operation to take down our details.
The first guilty man went out, answered various questions about his name,
address and so on and was then required to give fingerprints from all ten
fingers, for a reason I didn’t manage to work out. The interviewing officer
would then watch some TV, disappear for a while and then come back, watch some
more TV and call someone else over. A process that should have taken 20 minutes
took 4 hours and we were then all instructed to come out and sit on the floor.
The officers then had a chat with each other and watched more TV, leaving us
prisoners wondering if we would ever see our homes again, but then finally gave
us all a lecture about carrying ID. One of the officers then sat at the desk,
having a chat with people one at a time and ushering them outside. My interview
consisted of a request for money and a denial that I had any on my side, a
doubtful look before he impatiently waved me out. I was finally free !
A P.S. on the
importance of learning your lesson. The next day, we went on a weekend trip to
Bissau and were stopped at the first roadblock out of Ziguinchor. Surprise of
surprises, it was manned by none other than officer Diallo, the bribe requester
from the previous day. I decided to wave at him out of the window at which
point he ordered everyone off the minibus.
“So !” he said. “You
recognised me !”
“Yes I did sir”, I
replied
He asked me where I
was going and for my ID, which I proudly presented to him. He then shook my
hand and assured me that if I was caught without ID again he would ensure that
I don’t spend the night locked up again. In exchange for the appropriate
service fee, I presume…
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