Parking

Parking is a hassle, finding a space, making sure your car can fit into the space, and then making sure it’s reasonably secure so that no one will double park you or park too close to your car. Invariably one of these fails and you end up getting into the driver’s seat through the passenger door or something equally inconvenient.

How could it be worse, you ask? Well not finding a parking spot could be an issue. But, I think that having to pay for parking takes the cake. Parking meters, parking attendants, those little automatic parking scanners that act sort of like a Fast Pass all help make sure that nobody forgets that parking is no longer free.

One of the things I never considered when coming to Burkina Faso was parking. I figured well I’m going to be on a bike, in Burkina Faso- who would charge for parking there? Oh boy was I wrong.

As it turns out, parking attendant is one of the most popular jobs in Burkina Faso. You show up at a building, and somebody takes your bike, and gives you a piece of paper, then “protects your bike”. This usually involves sitting on a bench, drinking tea, and chatting. Then when you leave you have to give the guy 50 FCFA (10 cents) for guarding your bike. There is no choice because even if you don’t give the guy your bike he will STILL charge you for the parking. But, all in all, you do what you have to do, and when you get back you know your bike is going to be there. It’s not too big a deal unless you don’t have change; in which case, it becomes a huge issue.

What gets me is that the attendants also want to be paid for the work when they’re not there. When I was working at the American Language Center, this exact situation happened to a friend and I. We had gone to a bakery to get breakfast one day and since we had been going there for a while we knew the parking guy. He wasn’t there so we just left our bikes, walked inside, ate breakfast, and when we came out we grabbed our bikes the parking guy comes running up and told us to pay him for the parking. We explained that he was not there so we shouldn’t have to pay for the parking, and yes we knew he wasn’t there because the entire front of the bakery was made out of glass. So he told us all about how he had something happen at his house and he couldn’t get there on time, etc. We didn’t want to feel like jerks so we paid him- told him that if it happened again we wouldn’t pay him (because why would you expect to get paid for a job you didn’t do?) and we continued on our way.

A couple days later the same thing happened. He asked us to pay him, we explained the situation to him again, and we reiterated that if it happened again we wouldn’t pay. We strongly considered not paying but part of the Peace Corps mission is to prove that Americans are cool, awesome, benevolent and we thought to squabble about 20 cents would be a little ridiculous.

A few days later we went back to the bakery and the same thing happened. Again. This time, however, he came running up, saw who it was and just said, “See you tomorrow, right?” He then explained to us that he wasn’t there to do the work so he didn’t really expect to get paid, but he thought it was really nice how we talked to him each day and that tomorrow he would be there on time. And he was.

It was pretty awesome seeing that much behavior change within the span of four weeks. If only all my planned projects went that well.