Remember Me?

Madeleine and I were walking back to the Ngala Lodge enjoying the sound of the ocean waves, the warm sea breeze and, above all, the litter free road side. Funny how one quickly learns to appreciate the little things in life when one lives in a place like Conakry. We were in Banjul on a site visit to our new school.

The Gambia is one of the world’s poorest countries. One would never know it by the constant smiles on people’s faces. Holiday brochures describe Gambia as the ‘smiling coast’. Unlike Guinée which is one of the most resource rich countries in Africa (...resource rich country with starving people...aka The Guinea Scandal), the Gambia has only two things going for it...nuts and tourism. The Gambia’s economy was once dominated by exports of the country’s major cash crop, peanuts. However, since the 1970s the nut trade has spiraled downwards, and the country has never recovered. Tourism has been developed along the coast and the beaches and resorts that line long stretches of the shoreline rival any seaside resort throughout the world. And this is where we are moving come next August.

As previously stated, Madeleine and I were in Banjul for a school site orientation visit to meet with our new school community. Although the main purpose of our trip was to visit the school and the community, we came to this tourist haven well prepared like any seasoned tourist, lots of sunscreen and a few books to read while swinging from one of those hammocks on the beach. I, of course, was well armed with one of my old, rather outdated (I usually buy these at Value Village for a fraction of the price they cost new) Lonely Planet guidebooks. Although my Gambian Lonely Planet is outdated by a decade, it is still full of useful information (so what if the exchange rate has changed and Gambia Airways no longer exists, the country still remains 300km long and 35km wide as it was 10 years ago.) I have found that the reading of a Lonely Planet book is essential reading before undertaking any visit to an African country.

In my pre-travel reading, I usually go straight to the part of the book that I find the most intriguing and fun, which turns out to be, how not to get scammed. Throughout my travels, I have always been somewhat fascinated by the art of scamming. Forget those 8th century cathedral ruins, let me hang around that train station and experience getting bamboozled by some genius of a lowlife. I find getting scammed rather entertaining, as long as I know that I am getting scammed. I believe one could describe this victim awareness experience by using that vulgar expression about having something done to oneself with one’s pants on, but being a non vulgar individual, I will refrain from describing the art of getting swindled in that particular way.

I have always been very impressed with not only the diversity but especially the shifty artfulness of some of these tricky stratagems that have but one goal, and that is to extract hard earned money from an unsuspecting victim. Although in the past I have often been a ‘scammee’ who has surrendered some of his hard earned money to a ‘scammer’, I have never considered myself to be a victim, and especially an unsuspecting one, because I have always been aware that I was being scammed while being scammed. Furthermore, I have always looked at every scam incident as one more case study that would one day, when I become old and put out to pasture, find itself well chronicled in an anthology that will undoubtedly and inevitably become a best seller, and I, subsequently, will become, undoubtedly and inevitably, a best selling author. Or perhaps my mild desire and need to get chiseled out of a few bucks is just another one of my middle-aged-pushing-andropause quirks. Who knows?

Upon our arrival in Gambia, I read in my Lonely Planet guide a particular interesting scam called Remember Me? The book describes guys approaching you in the street and saying "Hello, it’s me, from the hotel, don’t you recognize me?" Then they go on to say that they are not dressed in their work attire because it is their day off so that is why you are having trouble recognizing them...blah blah blah...they end up walking with you and inviting you to visit with them...and blah blah blah...finally asking you for money (a loan that they will pay you back the following day at the hotel). Anyways, when reading this, my first reaction was...Can’t be...how can anyone be so dumb as to fall for such a trick? Right?

The following afternoon, Madeleine and I are out for a stroll and on our way back to the hotel..."Hello, it’s me, Diego, from the hotel! You don’t recognize me do you? I’m not dressed in my hotel clothes. You guys are nice people, you always say hello to me at the hotel". This guy was smooth. My first thought was ...this guy must have the same copy as I of the Lonely Planet!

By this time, although Madeleine and I had not talked much and had only let Diego go on with his shpiel, I decided to play along to see where this episode would lead us, and if, in fact, this was the Remember Me? saga as described in the Lonely Planet. If it was, I will have hit the jackpot and would have very good fodder for my eventual best selling book on scams. I was excited...a controlled excitement, that is.

We continued our walk towards the hotel and Diego followed us and explained that probably we did not see him the day before at the hotel because he just happened to have gotten married the day before and his new wife was at home and.....would we be interested in meeting her? I was getting even more excited now...always controlled excitement. Of course, I said, we would love to meet your new wife Diego. We continued our walk and after a lot of jibberish about how nice we were and that we were his first Canadian friends and that he was sure that all Canadians were nice like us, and blah blah blah. Diego continued to be a smooth talker. I continued to control my excitement.

Then, Diego suddenly stopped and told us that we had to make a right down this side (unlit) street to get to his house. Up to that point, I had thought that Madeleine had also clued into the roadside charade by our new found buddy and player Diego. Or had she?

I was relieved when Madeleine turned to me and said...you know what, I’m tired and its getting dark, and I would rather go back to the hotel. Whew...saved. I told the newly wed locked Diego that we would have to take a rain check on meeting the newly acquired lit’le missus. Diego looked disappointed and dejected. I could almost feel his panic as he realized that he was about to lose his prey. I could sense the bumster wheels in his bumster mind working overtime, desperately trying to think of a way to relaunch his trap.

As we started walking away, he continued to walk alongside us, babbling something about having promised his little lady some powdered milk and if we could spare a bit of money to enable him to buy some milk for her. I stopped, looked at him, and said, Powdered milk? I was disappointed with the way this was ending....powdered milk!?...come on Diego, you can do better than powdered milk! I looked at Madeleine and she looked at me...both of us are about to explode laughing, but we don’t in respect for this poor man who had really done an outstanding job of entertaining us for the past 20 minutes.

I figured that the theatrics of the past 20 minutes were well worth a couple of bucks to me, so I took out a few dalasis and I gave them to him. I shook his hand while wishing him luck with his new milk drinking wife. As I shook his hand, I could see in his eyes that he knew that I knew that this had been all a charade and that I had known this since the very beginning of the ruse, but that I was still his friend.

Hey, we have to do what we have to do, right?. I make a living teaching kids, Diego makes money annoying people. In this country of unimaginable poverty and considering I spend as much in Canada on a cup of coffee at Starbucks as Diego makes in a month, how could I not play along with his ‘job’?

As we walked off, Madeleine turned around and told Diego, we’ll see you at the hotel tomorrow. To which he asked...what hotel?