You’d think that living in New York for seven years would give you, at the very least, the stones to be able to deal with a whinny cab driver.

Last night, I was going home from work at about 8pm (as is per the usual here). I walked outside the UNDP compound and one of the private security guards that work the gate came out behind me — ostensibly to help me hail a taxi.

Some background here: there are two types of taxis here in Bangui and both of them look exactly the same. The first type is your regular taxi: hail, stop, get in, destination, pay fee (XAF1000 during the day and XAF1500 at night). (the exchange is XAF 410 = $1). So about $3.50 for a cab at night to anywhere in the city.

The other type of taxi is what my co-worker calls a “bus-taxi.” For those of you who only had one friend who had a drivers license but many friends who wanted to go to Big Boy to smoke cigarettes, you’ll have a pretty good idea of how this works. Usually there are between four and six people jammed into something slightly larger than a Beetle. The cabbie will only drive straight down whatever road he’s on and when your stop comes near, you tell him to stop, he stops (if you’re in the middle seat, everyone piles out) and you pay XAF150. It’s the best deal in town. These cabs are blunt instruments, but they get the job done if you live on one of the major routes.

Let me preface this by saying that I do not live on one of the major routes. I live between the Democratic Republic of Congo’s consulate and the Danish Medicins Sans Frontieres office. It’s on a dirt road near the somewhat recently looted stadium (which is next to the other stadium that was recently built by the Chinese for CAR — a nice gesture, I thought). So, I always have to take the less common taxis that are the ones that we’re all more familiar with.

Back to the story; so the security guard hails a taxi for me and tells him where I’m going (which is weird because I definitely speak enough French and have enough life experience to do both, but, whatever). After their conversation ends, the driver hands him a coin and we drive off.

I ask the driver, “XAF 1500, right?”
“Right,” he says.
I say, “Are you sure?”
“Yes. XAF 1500. no problem.”

Literally, no more than five minutes later, we arrive at my house. The guards are sitting out front, talking to the other guards on the street. Everything is fine. I hand the guy XAF 1500 and he turns to me and says, “No, it’s XAF 2000.”
I say, “What?”
He, with incredulity, ups the volume, “it’s XAF2000.”
“Why?!”
“The security guard, I gave him XAF500. That means the price is XAF 2000.”
“But we agreed on XAF1500”
“That’s true, XAF1500 in addition to the XAF500 you must pay me,” acting as though this was perfectly clear from the beginning (please review our earlier conversation if you’re confused)

By now the security guards are interested and walk over. This isn’t necessarily a good thing because these guys wield their authority like bulls in china shops. Anyway, the guard is listening to what I have to say, and he starts yelling at the cabbie in Sangho, the language that everyone here speaks (which is weird because while everyone here speaks Sangho, only some people speak French, and yet French is the official language — yet another totally strange thing about this place).

They yell at each other for about a minute or two, and then I interject that it’s insane that I should have to pay him extra both because he said the price was XAF1500 to begin with and because it was hardly my fault that he gave the UN guard XAF500.

Finally, after a few more minutes of shouting, grumbling, more shouting and assorted whines from the cab driver, I just get out and start walking towards the house.

And this is where I completely don’t understand myself at all.

For some reason, I turned around, walked back to the driver (who had now done a 180 in the middle of the road), and gave him the XAF 500. The driver wasn’t happy about it. I wasn’t happy about it. And I don’t think the security guard who had yelled at the guy for three minutes on my behalf was, was happy about it either — he was totally puzzled, if not completely pissed off. And why shouldn’t he be? What I did makes NO SENSE AT ALL. Which makes me wonder: was it just the principle?

Abe just told me a story about how, when he was living in Beijing several years ago, he got into a fight with a cab driver over $.85. Things got so heated that the driver took out a tire iron and started threatening Abe and his friends with it — the conflict culminating when one of the members of Abe’s party got his shirt torn off. But I think they never paid. And rightfully so.

wtf.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 1:39 pm and is filed under Red Hot CAR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.