That’s what the gendarmes and traffic police of Senegal seem to think when they see me, driving alone (or with a dog as the only passenger (heads up: foreshadowing!)). I thought my green diplomatic plates made me impervious to being stopped, but apparently if you’re the diplomat who’s compliant enough to pull over here, these guys will take advantage.

I went on a long road trip to the north of Senegal over Christmas and went through countless roadblocks but was only stopped once. The gendarme rifled through my paperwork (woefully incomplete thanks the overly bureaucratic process for my carte grise or car registration that is STILL ONGOING eight months since purchase of the car and countess stamps, ministries and mystery payments being made. Very recently my car was inspected by the bureau de mines which I still can’t understand what role they could possibly have in the car registration process but I’ve stopped asking. Although the obvious answer is that they’re mining my wallet and patience.

The first time I was pulled over in the north, the gendarme listlessly sorted through the worthless stack of papers I presented, and then waived me on. But I was not so lucky in subsequent encounters, including on my way to Toubab Dialao earlier this week.

Earlier this week I was pulled over close to home as I left Dakar for Toubab Dialao on my way to an Airbnb in a fishing village that feels overpopulated yet secluded at the same time, its usually burgeoning tourist-inflated economy put into deep freeze by COVID and the artisans and hawkers a shadow of their former selves, wraith-like, desiccated by what the pandemic has done to their once easy, enviable livelihoods. It reminded of an episode of the Brady Bunch where they visit a ghost town on their way to the Grand Canyon. But less kitschy and more heartbreaking.

In Toubab Dialao the hospitality community and artisans are feeling the pinch, but the fishermen on the beach are still working hard as they have for generations, regularly launching their pirogues after sunrise and returning before sunset, in the Senegalese version of punching in and out at the factory, except their hours are tied to the tides and the sun and the moon not the production schedule.

Tuesday was the second time in a few weeks that I’ve been pulled over, the time prior to that it was on my way to the office, one of the few times I’ve headed in since I arrived in September. I was taken off guard when the cop waived me over in the rond point Medina, but my knee-jerk reaction as an American rule-follower is to stop and see what’s going on. The cop presented me with bogus charges and then asked to see all my docs. He astutely noted that the stack of papers I handed over did not include the registration, just an assortment of officiously stamped and embossed papers required on the way to getting the registration, and that my international driver’s license had expired. The international drivers license is only good for one year, and I usually get a new one on a trip back to the US, which up until now had happened on at least an annual basis. It’s been 16 months since I was on American soil. Thanks, COVID. I have ordered a new one, but mail delivery and international courier service here has been decidedly hit-or-miss, with emphasis on miss. The UN has diplomatic pouches but it’s not for mail service for humble servants like yours truly.

Back to ront point Medina, after about 20 frustrating minutes of back and forth in a busy roundabout where I was holding up traffic, it ended up with me paying the traffic cop a ~$20 bribe (I didn’t have smaller change than a 10,000 CFA note) and I went on about my business.

Earlier this week when I was pulled over, it was because the dog in the seat next to me caught the gendarme’s attention. He waived me over, and told me angrily that animals weren’t allowed to be in a passenger vehicle, it was prohibited and what was I thinking?! Gendarme Fall looked through my useless paperwork, but didn’t zero-in on all the legitimate issues he could have taken up with me, as he had already decided on his made up one of the dog riding shotgun.

This exchange also took about 20 minutes and had threats of being sent to the brigade HQ to sort it out. (It also involved fruitless requests for my phone number which, even though getting hit on happens less and less the older I get, it somehow never becomes less irritating. We had already discussed that he had a wife and daughter, and this guy definitely couldn’t afford me as his second wife!)

This exchange ended with me paying a ~$10 bribe. Gendarme Fall made sure I understood that he was letting me off easy that this Real Infraction had a penalty of 6,000 CFA but he accepted my 5,000 CFA note and made me a gift of the~ $2 I was short.

Just bummed out that I’m now a mark for traffic cops looking to supplement their income, and not sure when I became the pushover who pays the bribes. When I was younger I had more backbone, or time to spare, or less disposable income, or all of the above I guess. When I got pulled over in random parts of the world, and when they tried to get a bribe out of me I played chicken and said let’s go to your HQ or to your supervisor now and see what they have to say, usually with a heavy dose of righteous indignation like how dare they try to bend the law with me – they picked the wrong gringa!

Not sure where that defiant, moral highroad occupying person is nowadays. Apparently, she’s too put out to make a stand. Or simply accepts that the payment is a better use of time and money than going through the proper channels that will require navigating the fine payment and recovery of my seized documents from some obscure hard to find facility on another day in the bowels of the Senegalese bureaucracy.

Lesson learned: don’t make eye contact with police and gendarmes, and keep on driving if they try to flag me down. Wouldn’t have worked out great in the last situation because traffic was at a standstill, but I think nevertheless I’ll try to power through next time. Hopefully it won’t turn into this kind of standoff.