The Ugly Side Of Poverty (Stung by a ‘Sai Sai’) (From The Northern Echo)

The Ugly Side Of Poverty (Stung by a ‘Sai Sai’)

4:24pm Tuesday 8th March 2011 in Reader Blogs

For Dakar expat ‘veterans’, the tale I am about to tell will - alas - be an old and familiar one. To put it bluntly...I was taken for a mug.

It’s a rather embarrassing admission at my age. Aren’t you supposed to be more savvy in your thirties? Your intuition more finely honed? Well, that’s the thing... I did know deep down. My gut all but shrieked at me often enough. But did I listen? Did I heck.

Yes, you guessed it, we’re talking about a man!

It all began two years ago. I was pretty new to town and hadn’t yet realized that even the most worldly-wise of bachelorettes would need a souped up lie detector and extra strength protection for her heart – and her purse – to survive.

That night, a gal pal introduced me to what was to become one of my favourite haunts...’Smelly Club’. A straw thatch roofed melting pot of a dance venue, right on the sea, where the beer was cheap, the beats frenetic and the air rather polluted by the sewage pipes spilling into the ocean... The more pressing form of pollution, however, was the ‘sai sais’ (womanizers!).

Now, I’d been a bit subdued of late. My living arrangements were rather stressful (OK, I’ll be honest, they were the family from hell...), daily pestering and being stared at wherever I went was beginning to take its toll and a chap who I’d thought was lovely had turned out to be less than dependable. Morale was at a low ebb. And then up popped The Cameroonian.

He made a bee-line for me at the bar, with his raffish hat and a broad grin. (I’d later learn that the former was borrowed, like most of his stuff, and the latter was fake..or at least loaded with a hidden agenda). My Senegalese gal pal tried to bat him away – at least her antenna was on form that night – but I was already beguiled by his smile and his magnetic interest in me.

That night we danced, we laughed, I suppose we must’ve talked, but I can’t remember what about. We left the club as the sun rose and wandered around the city, jumping on ‘car rapides’ (the brightly painted, clapped out communal minibuses) and jumping off wherever the fancy took us. We snoozed on the beach. He called his Mum in Cameroon to let me talk to her (the first signs of his OTT stalker potential..?) It felt liberating, adventurous and a little bit reckless...just what I needed as a pick-me-up.

But all too soon the cracks began to show. Now the thing about The Cameroonian was that you couldn’t exactly call him an intellectual. His vocab was so sorely lacking that he’d forever just pull out his cover-all phrase “machin truc etcetera” (“thingummy bob etcetera”) even during the most crucial of crisis talks. But where IQ was lacking, his ego (or rather, his bravado) made up for it. A bravado which meant he felt himself too good to look for a job.

It’s a common conundrum here...if you love your guy and realise he can’t change his situation, you don’t mind so much being the breadwinner. But The Cameroonian didn’t even try to get work...so I had to pay for everything. Well, my Keeping It Real budget couldn’t take it – and nor could that little voice in my head asking “Why is he with you?” Plus there was something about him I didn’t quite trust. A shiftiness around the eyes perhaps?

His increasingly Neanderthal behaviour wasn’t helping things. He started warning male friends off me, he’d get jealous if I went out without him and one memorable evening during a drinks do at my place, he decided to take his top off for the remainder of the soirée (talk about Alpha Male crap – please!) The stories were endless. I’d had enough.

Disentangling myself was another matter. After a few too many false starts, I cut off.

Cue : over a year and a half of daily texts and calls from a plethora of numbers to catch me out, unannounced visits at all hours, and a whole gamut of manipulative and sometimes aggressive behaviour which in Blighty would have led to a restraining order. He claimed we were destined to be together. I begged to differ.

As if that wasn’t enough, last week I found out something which made my blood boil. I bumped into a former friend of his. “You remember that money you sent him when you were in England?” (It was to have some important documents sent over.) “Well, he told me you’d sent the money for him. The drinks were on him that night”. The Cameroonian had told me that he’d been robbed at knife point.

Funnily enough he doesn’t like the texts I’m now sending him. He says he doesn’t want to hear from me ever again. I think the subtleties of irony are lost on him. At least it’s shut him up.

The story does have a happy ending though. Six months ago, in my local shop, I happened to meet the most non -‘sai sai’ man I have ever known. We now have a piglet together (really!) But if you do happen to be a bachelorette who’s taking a trip to these parts...hoist that antenna high...and listen to what your gut is telling you.