taxi

I needed a visa. The reason I didn't fly into Guinea-Bissau, but rather Dakar, Senegal was because I needed a visa and I couldn't get one stateside (more on this in another post). Flying into Senegal meant I would need to take a taxi down to Gabu, Guinea-Bissau. Let me rephrase that - not 'a' taxi but 8 taxi's. This does not include the drive me around taxi's Roy and I used to run some errands. Most of these 8 (6 I believe) were what is known as 'set plus' - meaning seven place. Each taxi had room for 7 passengers. The cars were about the size of a subaru wagon with a third seat bolted in back to give them an extra row of seating. As you can imagine not a very comfortable ride. Especially when traveling for hours on end. When I say hours, I mean hours. We left Tuesday afternoon and arrived Thursday morning. The majority of that time spent in a taxi, knees together up in your chest, shoulders wedged. Your ass gets tired from sitting on such a hard seat and muscles ache from not being constricted for so long.

Riding in the taxi is only 1/3 of the experience. There is negotiating the price for the taxi which always takes an inordinate amount of time. As soon as you walk into the tax depot 10 people walk up to speaking very loudly, gesturing wildly and asking you in multiple languages where you are going. They explain they have the best taxi and it will only cost you X amount of franks cefa. The first price is usually outrageous. Three to four times what you should pay. The first round through Roy did most of the negotiating, which I took notes from. Negotiating, it seems is a way of life, they love it, it means your doing "business." Here's some tips I picked up for negotiating taxis in Africa:

• don't let anyone take your bags to their cab, if you do you most likely riding with them
• employ some phrase in some affect of " don't want to pay the white man tax" or "just because I have white skin doesn't mean I should pay more"
• say what you will pay and stare off into the distance ignoring what they are saying (this one I learned from the natives)
• have what you are willing to pay in cash in your hand
• walk away
• try to use logic when adding up the total price (this may or may not work)

On that last bit of advice. At the taxi depot in Bissau on our way home we got their in the late afternoon and getting 7 people to fill a taxi may or may not happen. The price was 4,900 fc to go from Bissau to Zingchor, and on the way the taxi is loaded on a ferry and then you continue. Only the ferry is broken so the taxi can only take you to the ferry crossing. So why pay all the way to the ferry crossing? You just do. We were assured we get the difference in the money back at the crossing. We asked how much to just the ferry crossing: 1,000 fc. One more guy came, so now there is three of us. After another 30 minutes no one else showed up and we said we would like to pay for the remaining seats on the taxi and to just be dropped off at the ferry crossing. Should be 7,000 fc right? 1,000 per seat time 7 seats. Wrong. The driver wanted more money. A total of 19,000 fc. Huh? That's right 1,000 times 7 is 19,000. Who knew. Empty seats cost a lot more for some reason. Even though the taxi will use less fuel you need more money. So we negotiated with driver through a friend I made for the next 30 minutes. Employing math, and what have you. Our friend Alliou agreed with us, but the driver wasn't having it. So finally after about 30 minutes we got the price down to 15,000 fc.

This was only one instance, most of the time I enjoyed the negotiating. It's part of the culture, the experience. However, when you've been traveling for 20+ hours in taxis, your tired, hungry and patience for negotiating just isn't there.

TIA.