Con Man!

I met a con man on the ferry.

As I’m boarding the ferry, I hear a man shouting, “Basse! Basse! Basse!”
I say, “I am going to Basse.”
“Basse, eh?”
“Yes.”

He takes one of my bags and helps me shove through the crowd to the car. It was starting to seem like the best day ever. I had not had a long wait at the ferry terminal and was making excellent time. Now I’d found a car to Basse while still on the ferry. I had heard of other volunteers getting cars on the ferry, which always seemed like the luckiest thing ever because:

• you don’t have to deal with walking to the car park and pushing through the fast-moving crowd
• and worrying about something being snatched from the outside pocket of a bag,
• or about dropping the ferry ticket before you’ve reached the men collecting them at the gate
• and you don’t have to sit waiting in a car in a car park while it fills.

I remained excited even after I saw that the car was a gelle and not a sept-plas, as I’d assumed. The man said to give him the pass. I asked how much; he said 250. I can’t remember how much I’d paid for my last trans-Gambia gelle, but it semed about the same, fifty dalasis cheaper than a sept-plas. This money would make up for the fact that I’d overpaid for a taxi on the way to the ferry. There is a story behind that, too, but it’s boring.

I overhear another passenger being charged only 150 dalasis and that doesn’t seem fair, but I do not care enough to look for the man who collected my pass and confront him about why. It could be one of many reasons, anyway. Maybe for being a toubab, maybe for my bags, maybe it was even something legitimate, maybe that other passenger would dropping at a village much closer than Basse.

Another man comments that it is “not correct” that the pass is being collected now. But I’d been in gelles before where pass was collected before the start of the trip, so I figured the guy didn’t know what he was talking about.

There are a few people in the gelle and I don’t worry too much about it filling because more people are getting on after me. By the time the ferry has reached Barra we have a full car and are ready to go.

After we’ve driven a little past Barra, the man sitting to my right (who I am already a little angry at because he opened up the window more than necessary given how cold it was) says, “Pass. 150 dalasis.”
I reply, “I have already paid” and return to my semi-nap.

A few minutes later I get a tap on my shoulder. “Give me 150 dalasis.”
I’m wondering what is going on because

1. I already paid and
2. I guess I did pay 100 dalasis more than necessary.

“I already paid.”
“No.”
“Yes, I did. I am not going to pay again.”

Back to semi-napping.

A few minutes later: “You did not pay your pass.”
I reply, trying to contain my frustration because I don’t want to speak too quickly and not be understood. “But I did. I do not know if it was you or who, but I paid somebody 250 dalasis for pass.”
“No.”
“Yes. I am not paying two times; that would not be correct.”

I decide to ignore the man.

In Farafenni, but before we reach the market, we stop in front of some building or something. I think one of the passengers had a delivery to make. The driver turns to face me and says, “The aparante tells me you are refusing to give him the pass.”
“Yes.”
“But…why?”
“Because I already paid. On the ferry, when I got into the car, I paid a man 250 dalasis.”
There is some talking among the men in Wollof, but in English one man confirms that he saw me pay the 250 dalasis. Then the driver asks, with the voice of someone bemoaning a loss, “But why did you pay that man? He was a criminal!”
“But I did not know. I though he was the aparante.”
The man sitting in front of me turns around and says, “Even me, I paid him 150 dalasis, I did not know.”

Whoever had errands to run, or people to greet or whatever, returns, so we drive a couple of minutes up the road to the food vendors. We stop again so that everyone can step out and buy breakfast. I buy an egg sandwich and when I finish eating it I go stand in the shade of the gelle. The aparante approaches me and I worry that he’s going to continue insisting I pay the fare, but instead he says, “Next time, before you pay, you should ask the man, ‘who is the aparante?’ That man was a criminal! You paid 250 and that man paid 150…ay-ay-ay…”
“But you said that man is a criminal, no?”
“Yes, he is a criminal!”
“So even if I ask, ‘Are you the aparante?’ he will say, ‘yes.’ He will not tell the truth.”

The aparante does not seem to be following my logic, but another man does and reassures me, “Yes, it was not your fault.” The aparante says something starting with “Next time” but I ignore it. When he pauses I say, “Maybe next time, if the driver is there or if the aparante is there, in the car, then I would not give the money to the wrong person.” The other man again reassures me that it was not my fault. I glance into the gelle, hoping to see more people returned from breakfast so that I can leave and take a seat.

Nope. So I enjoy some more awkward minutes of standing around in silence until the driver changes the subject: “What is your name?” This is followed by a discussion of how my name is not actually Binta Jallow but is, unbeknownst to me, Binta Touray. The driver's last name was Touray.


A few minutes later all passengers have returned and we continue driving. At the next two or three police checkpoints the driver tells his story, more to hear the officer’s sympathetic clucks than anything else, I think, because as the first policeman told him, there is really nothing they can do without knowing who the man was.


Back at home, I tell the story to Neene. She enjoys it and interjects lots of gasps and “huh?!”s. When I finish she concludes, “There are some bad people in this world.”