"Ca c'est pas l'Afrique"

I was walking along the street. I was going to the bank. A man, in his thirties, dressed in a smart black shirt, was standing by a car and jangling a set of keys, as if he was going to get in and drive off.

"Bonsoir Madam," he said, and with one look I knew I didn't know him.

Before I could reply, because I almost always greet the strangers who greet me, he said, angrily, "So you don't recognise me huh?" and I walked on without replying.

Sometimes, it is true, you meet someone once, you chat briefly, you forget them, then you see them again somewhere totaly unconnected and they remember your name and what day you spoke, but you have no recollection of them. It is embaressing, but it happens.

I knew I didn't know this person, although he looked vaguely like my plumber, but he also didn't look like the kind of guy who hangs around in the market pulling this trick on every toubab who comes along, in the hope of getting an extortionate sale out of them. He was smart and he had a car. It was confusing.

I went to the bank. I returned, and as I was crossing the road, the same man came up from behind me, as if he'd been following me, and said, angrily,

"When you see someone you know, you greet them. It's like that in Africa."

Oh, right. That old chesnut. Look at the rude tourist who doesn't know how to behave with humanity and respect. She wasn't brought up properly. In Europe they're all rude anyway, no one talks to anyone else, and then they come here and they do the same to Africans. C'est pas comme ca en Afrique.

If it's one thing that drives me mad, it's being told how to behave properly by con-artists.

He tried to walk beside me, I tried to let him walk ahead, he tried one more time, I took refuge with a nice boy who was selling fake perfume, the guy went on. I watched him, as he watched me, take out a piece of carboard box and set it on the wall of the cathedral. He would sit and wait for his next target. Still wearing his best shirt, and jangling his car keys.