The Senegalese Post Office, a Case Study & some hilarious travel drama

Like most gems the French left behind after their colony days with Senegal, such as the inability to form and wait in a lines, a write-and-study-only-what-you-see-written-on-the-board-and-the-teacher-is-never-wrong-so-don’t-ask-anything-in-class educational system, the Senegalese Post Office deserves to be shared with those of you reading along at home in the comfy US. You see, in the United States we have the luxury of being able to walk into a post office and buy stamps along with other people who are also just buying stamps (or something similar, packages, etc.). I first noticed this very odd phenomenon while studying abroad in Paris during the fall of 2007. La Poste as they call it there and here, is not only just a post office, but also, and even more so a bank… Try to stick with me here, I was confused too. I didn’t mind it too much in Paris because most French don’t spend all day hawking the counters at their banks, but here in Senegal that is exactly what they do (think the DMV but worse). To my best understanding the group of Senegalese waiting at the Post Office’s counter, which all day long numbers around 20 or so, is there waiting for money wire transfers. I’m supposing that most of these people are there trying to access some of the money sent to them by family member who has made it off to the magical and fabled land of Dakar, where money is a plenty (but not as abundant as it is in the US where Obama gives it to us by the bucket load, daily, according to many Senegalese I’ve talked to). This is a good thing. Oldest son leaves the poor, humble Pulaar farm in South Kedougou to make the big franc CFAs up in Dakar in order to help support the family. It’s great. Except for when I want to write one of you a letter or a post card, or get postage for a package, or pick up a package…That’s when I get to wait in the endless line that is the La Poste bank…Which brings me to why the Post Office should not be a bank. Combined with the aforementioned genetic incapability to queue up and wait, this line can be and always is miserable. There are other banks that exist here that also have Western Union wire transfer counters…but I still haven’t figured out why the Post Office is the place of choice. Perhaps it’s the Restaurante La Poste, which doesn’t actually exist here in Kedougou (we’re too far out in the sticks) but there’s one in Tambacounda, lunch 7 days a week. I’m guessing some savvy cook noticed that there’s a lot of Senegalese getting hungry while waiting in line (a figurative line) for hours to shout at the assorted glacialy slow-moving tellers, as if they were placing bets with a bookie at a horse race, cheers to them. All joking aside though, this is the reality here, so cherish our American way of separation of Bank and Post, I can’t wait for it when I return in two years.

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A funny thing happened on the way back to Kedougou…After my Dakar trip I spent a couple days with my friend Mikael in Tambacounda, the last major city before you get to Kedougou. When it came time to head back to the Gou (as we call it here, we’re the Gou Crew) we went to the garage to find me a sept-place. The garage can be a scary and hectic place. Hundreds of cars, taxis, sept-places, and alhums all of which would never pass inspection in the United States, are waiting around with their drivers trying to shuffle you off into them for your trip. Despite the lack of a ticket counter or schedule as you’d expect at most large public transportation depots back in the States such as a train or bus station, it’s remarkably quite efficient. Taking a sept-place, which is French for a station wagon that can hold 7 passengers (don’t ask how we fit in, it’s miserable), can be the fastest way to travel long distances in Senegal. The only problem is these cars will not leave until all 7 seats are filled. Up until then I had always traveled with a large group of volunteers, and had the luxury of group bargaining and a speedy departure. I think I was one of the first people to buy a seat in my sept-place, which meant I spent nearly an hour and a half waiting to leave. While waiting, I noticed they were cramming all the luggage into the tiny space behind the third row of seats. This made more sense when they threw the first goat up on top. This is common here so I didn’t mind it, until there were seven goats on top of the sept-place (which apparently means 7 seats for people and 7 animals).

seven goats tied in rice sacks ready for a 3-4 hour drive...

there were seven of them I promise, some are hiding

I got stuck with the worst seat in the car, the middle furthest back seat, and considering that the two back windows wouldn’t roll down, it was pretty bad. About an hour into the ride the one guy next to one of the non-functioning windows figured out how to open it, the wind was amazing…for 5 minutes, then one of the goats peed and it started to pour in the window on the man. The window went promptly went up. This happened three more times, luckily my seat was far enough away from any of the windows for me to get peed on, crisis averted, until the car broke down…The driver fixed it after we sat in the shade on the side of the road for an hour. By then two of the people in the car had flagged down another car and left us behind, this meant I got the back bench seat all to myself, which was great, until the car broke down again…This time there was no fixing it, it just wouldn’t work. The driver flagged down this 1960s charter bus that was passing by. You don’t travel in these things, it’s just a rule, they’re miserable and crowded…but there I was. Another two hours, and the realization that my seat and subsequently my pants were wet, I was back in Kedougou, hope the goats were ok...No public transportation for me for awhile.