Time for Change

Before heading to the beach and hotel Mermoz this past Saturday we stopped by the Exotica grocery store to pick up some snacks. I picked out a few items and put them on the counter. The bill was 2800CFA. I took out my wallet and handed over a 10 000 bill, held my breath, and prepared myself for the ensuing argument. The problem is, there is a serious deficiency of physical currency here in Senegal that is that bane of any shopper’s existence. I cannot describe it any other way than to say if you know you need to do some shopping, you really have to think about where you’re going and what change you’ll need when you get there.

The change issue often sculpts my plans to run errands. If I know I need to buy fruit from a fruit stand and take 2 taxis that day, (or worse yet, share a taxi) and all I have are 10 000 notes, I pretty well have to walk 1km out of the way to the OiLybia gas station where they almost always have change (thanks to the taxi drivers buying 2 and 3 dollars of gas at a time), buy a pack of gum to break the note, then carry on. Last time I took cash out of the machine and it came out in 5000CFA bills, it was like I won the lottery because with 5000 notes, it’s only half as hard to get change! When you do get change, you need to be sure to guard it as though it’s gold and use sparingly.

So there I was in Exotica, a grocery store notorious for being very reluctant to give up change. I took out the bill, placed it on the counter and slid it towards the cashier very slowly trying to keep my poker face in check. “What, you don’t have to money?” the lady asked curtly. In actual fact I had three times the money and what she was doing was calling my bluff. Normally I hide money all over the place so that I can make a big show of having an empty wallet save for the one big note, but today in actual fact, I had no smaller change and 2 taxi rides pending so really, I was desperate! We stared at each other a for a spell, sweat trickled down the side of my brow, I spoke awful French to make her pity me, and at long last, the lady backed down and sent her assistant off with my cash to go bug other nearby stores for change. Last week I paid for a café au lait the same way and every employee in the café—five people—had to dig through their pockets to give me change.

I honestly have no idea why they don’t take bigger bills out of circulation and replace them with smaller coins and bills other than to think that that is an expensive project for a country that has other, much bigger fish to fry. Seriously, I have rarely ever paid 10 000+ for anything other than a weekend excursion away or the bus ride to Dakar and hotel as most purchases are rather inexpensive. I can only imagine how frustrating it is for the people who are out there selling things every day, working really hard to make 100CFA for a coffee or 500CFA for a cab ride, and never really having the right change to conduct business with.

I would also like to correct something from my past blog. Fedherbe Bridge is not getting a twin. Replacement sections are being built alongside the bridge and are then slotted in when they are complete... a very deceiving method of bridge building if I do say so myself. The old section is then taken out and crumpled into a pile, awaiting shipment elsewhere to be recycled. This weekend the bridge was closed for such an occasion leaving us worried that we would be stranded at Mermoz or worse yet would have to find a pirogue to take us back to the mainland. Fortunately the swap took less time than anticipated and I was able to enjoy a nice, breezy walk home.