Bargaining is a daily dance in Senegal
DAKAR, SENEGAL— You don’t step into the Saturday fuggi jaay. You dive.
The throbbing second-hand market runs down the median of a busy street, with overflowing stalls on both sides, leaving just a trickle of space between them.
You can buy cast-off dress shirts, baby clothes, wedding dresses for almost nothing, as long as you squeeze, dig and latch onto poles, so you are not sucked away.
The noise is overpowering: megaphones blurting fuzzy messages, vendors singing and shouting their bargains, the traffic on either side.
I fished a single leather sandal from a jumbled pile and asked for the price.
“8,000,” the vendor responded, straight-faced. That’s 8,000 West African CFA francs — twice the daily wage of a local construction worker. “Bachna? Good?”
When I first arrived in Senegal nine months ago, I would have been outraged. This man was trying to sell me second-hand sandals for $18! Did he take me for a fool? So long, thief! But I have learned the elaborate dance of bargaining since then.
I smiled widely, as if he had just told me a silly joke. “Bachul. Very bad,” I said. Then I counter-offered with a price so low, any decent person would blush for shame: $3.40.
Bargaining isn’t a sport in Senegal. It’s a bodily function like breathing. You bargain for everything: Rent. Food. Clothing. Transportation.
The cabs don’t have meters, which means you can’t just hop into one, unless you’re looking to blow money.
But unlike breathing, bargaining doesn’t come naturally. You have to learn it. “A Senegalese woman never rushes,” my friend, Adja, confided recently. “You do everything slowly, especially shopping.”
There are at least six steps involved in every transaction. Take the cab you’ve just waved down. Step One: Lean into the window, and greet the driver in fulsome Senegalese fashion, which entails asking after his health, his state of peace, his family and his morning. Step Two: Tell him where you are going and ask for the price. Step Three: Give a lowball counteroffer. Step Four: He’s edged down, now you edge up to the standard fare. Step Five: Amul solo, you say. No problem. Wish him a good day and step away. Guaranteed: He will roll forward two metres, stop, and wave you in. The procedure works seamlessly for every purchasable item, except in most cases it’s you who rolls away. A pillow salesman once trailed me for two blocks, dropping his price every few steps until he reached the standard price. Along the way, he used every creative tactic at hand: I was his friend (false intimacy), his first customer of the day (empathy), his only chance to pay a bill (guilt) . . . I enacted my own persuasion counteroffensive: we were friends (false intimacy), I might be a white toubab but I am not rich (shame), if I don’t get a pillow soon, my husband will look for a second wife (cultural humour). . . “Bargaining is not about the price. It’s about the interaction,” the CEO of a powerful Senegalese NGO told me. “The oral tradition is huge here.” Cut a deal too quickly, you’ve robbed the vendor of the day’s flavour — which is why I always leave myself room to rise. “How do you know what the standard fare is?” you might ask — a truly excellent question. Here’s what I’ve learned: every Senegalese person carries an ornate spreadsheet of prices in their head, which they recalibrate regularly. If they see you with something new, they invariably ask how much you paid for it (and invariably tell you that you were hosed). This is market research.
They might have bought a pillow only once in their lives, but they will remember the price. It’s a matter of survival.
“It’s not just toubabs who get overcharged,” Adja told me.
Mr. Second-Hand Sandals was testing to see if I’d done my research, which I had.
I made it two feet from his table, when he arrived behind me, sandals in hand.
“You are a true Senegalese,” he said in Wolof.
I paid $4.50 for them. Catherine Porter is a Star columnist who has gone on leave for a year to live in Dakar, Senegal. She writes about her adventures each week in the Life section. She can be reached at catherine_porter@rogers.com. You can follow her daily snapshots on Twitter @porterthereport.