If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. This is a motto that is relevant in Senegal. In the ease of doing business report published annually by IFC, Senegal ranks 120 out of 190 economies and one of the issues weighing it down is bureaucracy.

“The Ease of doing business index ranks countries against each other based on how the regulatory environment is conducive to business operations. Economies with a high rank (1 to 20) have simpler and more friendly regulations for businesses.” https://tradingeconomics.com/senegal/ease-of-doing-business

It takes 4 processes and 6 working days to register a business here. Allegedly. I have yet to ground truth this with one of the small businesses my agency finances. However I find it impossible to believe after trying to accomplish tasks that have brought me into orbit with some of the hundreds of ministries involved in day-to-day life in Senegal. Even compared with other francophone countries I’ve lived in, Senegal takes bureaucracy to a whole new level.

Where to start? First of all, let’s talk about getting my car registered. The car I bought in October. Of last year. We are on step approximately 1,000 of that process and I’m about to have to shell out another $450 to a customs agent to get the remaining six steps accomplished. One of them involves driving the car to the Bureau of Mines. Why? I don’t even ask anymore what the Bureau of Mines could possibly have to do with my vehicle registration. I am NOT making this up.

Because I work for the UN, the car has green diplomatic plates. I bought the car from another diplomat, who bought it from another diplomat who was the original owner and did all the formalities at the original purchase of the duty-free vehicle, so this should be a less cumbersome process than the normal one. But no. In fact when I purchased the car it was still in the name of the previous owner that the person I bought it from bought it from in January 2020. Because that’s how long the title transfer takes! We have only recently reached the step where the registration has been issued in the name of the person I bought the car from. She left the country in November of 2020. After about 35 notary stamps from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and myriad others on countess pages of documents, we do have a sales invoice that proves she sold the car to me. But that isn’t enough to get a title in my name. Not yet.

I am hopeful that sometime before I have to sell or dispose of the car I will have evidence that it belongs to me.

And the formal bureaucracy seems to have filtered into the informal economy. Which leads me to the topic of apartment repairs. In West Africa the apartment inspection that takes place when you sign the lease is very important. Any defects that are not meticulously captured in this annex to the lease agreement, l’etat de lieu, will be deducted from your deposit when you move out. Several items that required repair were identified during this inspection, all of them minor. On October 8 2020 the landlord agreed to take care of them, theoretically concomitant with me taking possession of the apartment, otherwise shortly thereafter. The landlord sent their plumber and handyman to start ticking through the items.

Unfortunately, each of them would come, I’d explain the issue to them, e.g., water pooling under the kitchen sink, they’d eyeball the situation, decide what the problem was (without investigating or testing it to confirm their hypothesis), “fix it”, do nothing about the other items on the punch list and leave — after they had arrived several hours late for the original appointment — claiming they needed more materials, or had a baptism or a funeral to attend. And then I’d desperately try to get them to come back to complete the work. For days and weeks at a time before they’d show again. In the meantime, I’d discover that the “fix” was for something that was not the problem, and the water would keep pooling under the kitchen sink or whatever, and they’d come back, repeat the same process of “fixing” it without properly diagnosing the problem and disappear again for a few weeks.

The worst was when the plumber was making a minor repair to the glass shower door and shattered it. I’m still finding glass shards under bathroom cabinets. In this case the cure was much worse than the disease, and it took until a couple of weeks ago, in January 2021, to get it finally and completely remedied. After no joke about 6 or 7 visits from the plumber and at least 5 missed appointments. The last of the repairs promised by the landlord was only completed last month, more than three months after the date it was promised. The entire punch list could have been completed by a competent contractor in a single visit in one day, IMHO.

That’s a lot of bellyaching but in spite of its shortcomings on the bureaucracy front, I’m very happy to be living in Dakar. The hot season wound down in November and it is really pleasant weather – sunny (although sometimes smoggy or dusty (Harmattan)) and 65-75 degrees Fahrenheit. This apartment is well-situated and I keep the windows open and hear the birdsong and see the Atlantic ocean from my living room windows and from my comfortable home office have a nice view of the African Renaissance Monument and the lighthouse at Mammelles. I live in a neighborhood that is near a string of beachside restaurants, and my friends and colleagues and I manage to meet outdoors for drinks or dinner at least once a week, even during COVID. Of course we are outdoors, socially distanced and maksed up. So much to be grateful for and almost worth putting up with all the bureaucracy.

And if you were thinking how refreshing it was not to see a political post, well, not so fast. Because the expression in the title also makes me think of Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic-controlled Congress that are impeaching Trump for the second time. A conviction is unlikely, but no one deserves it more than former President Trump.