Cell Phone Setbacks

Yesterday, I had an interview with a fairly well-known Dakarois poet named Elie-Charles Moreau. The interview was really successful-- Moreau was totally enthusiastic and gave me a lot of new contacts that will be useful for my Independent Study Project. With the confidence and excitement that's always a positive symptom of connecting with someone despite looming language barriers, I mounted a car rapide, the brightly-painted, wackily-decorated, 35-year old vans that serve as public transportation throughout Dakar. Car rapides are cheap (50 to 100 CFA, which is about a dime in USD), they traverse the peninsula of Dakar, and are usually packed tight with people who would have no qualms pickpocketing a toubab like me.

So I should have known better than to hop onto the over-crowded van, leaving my purse unlocked and mostly unguarded. With one hand, I was holding a handful of books and papers Moreau had given me, with the other, I was gripping onto the back door of the car rapide for dear life, my hair swinging in the wind as we swerved through traffic. Meanwhile, someone else's hand sneaked into my purse and discovered my cell phone. C'est pas grave, just an annoyance. And l can't say how lucky I am that they didn't get my wallet.

The theft of my cell phone isn't the heart of my story, though. Today I went to buy a new one at the Orange store in Point E. Orange is like the Verizon of Senegal, donc, I expected the Orange store to be like a Verizon store in the U.S. You know: you walk in, pick out a phone, and buy it. But that would be too easy, too sensical, for the likes of Senegal. Instead, the Orange store is a collection of long lines, numbers assigned to customers, called in fast succession and skipped quickly. It's the true epitome of beaurocracy. I spent about an hour navigating the line labyrinth there-- explaining to people again and again that I just wanted to buy a new cell phone. My number got skipped a couple times, I got shoved to the back of several lines, but finally, I succeeded in securing a new phone and SIM card.

Feeling triumphant, my next stop was the bank. I had a couple big bills and I just wanted to get change. To my chagrin, though, the moment I entered the bank I found myself on the end of another long line, assigned to another distant number, plunged into total African beaurocracy. As I waited, I attempted to set up my phone, met le pouce et cetera, I couldn't get the stupid thing activated. Gritting my teeth, thinking about my stolen phone, the lost contacts, my time lost waiting in so many lines, I almost felt the familiar frustrated tears.

But I sucked it up. I asked the people sitting on either side of me for help, and soon I found myself swarmed by people in the bank, overwhelmed with generousity and help. My phone was passed around to about a dozen people, each altruistic stranger trying to get it to work, as I explained my story. En fait, c'est mon deuxieme portable-- l'autre était volé hier à la car rapide, et ce matin j'ai du attendre un heure à Orange! C'est dommage, quoi. Finally, a young Senegalese man figured out how to activate my SIM card. He handed my phone back to me, shaking his head at my cell phone ordeal. "Bienvenue à l'Afrique," he smiled. Welcome to Africa.