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Premium: Reflections On A Trip To West Africa · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  So I'm here with my friend Dan and one of my oldest and closest friends from school who's
• 0:11
  travelling around Africa with me. If you haven't heard the last episode, then you should
• 0:17
  probably listen to that first because this is a dispatch from the continent of Africa.
• 0:24
  Part 2, this is Part 2, and I thought I would include Dan because why not? He's here with me.
• 0:29
  Where are we right now? We're in, I think we've just moved over into what's known as the
• 0:35
  Western region of Ghana. So we're heading towards the border to Cote d'Ivoire and we're just
• 0:42
  west of a place called the Cape Coast. Cape Coast was the main place where they would throw
• 0:48
  slaves into a dungeon and then have a fine tea and the governor's house on top looking out
• 0:54
  over a pretty stretch of quite idyllic tropical coastline. Which it's so, let's talk about some
• 1:00
  of the things that are surprising. I mean, I think the idyllic nature of the coast was unexpected.
• 1:06
  Sure. I mean, I sent a photo back to my family and one of them said to you, you would be surprised
• 1:13
  to pick that as being something other than the South Pacific. Yeah, I certainly wasn't expecting.
• 1:18
  Palm trees, endless stretches of beautiful beaches, probably can't swim in the water.
• 1:24
  Locals say that that's because the surface too rough, but it's really because most locals can't
• 1:29
  swim, and also there's a lot of effluent that runs off from, so we've been... Or at least we're
• 1:35
  suspicious. Yeah, certainly suspicious. There seems to be a kind of a silty hue to the water.
• 1:42
  Sometimes chocolatey. Sometimes chocolatey hue to the water, but out past the breakers,
• 1:48
  you can see beautiful blue. It looks like you would imagine the seashells or Zanzibar or
• 1:55
  Madagascar or something to be. Probably because it's very similar because it's the same
• 1:59
  continent as all of those places. Yeah, probably the same latitude as well. There you go. So we're
• 2:05
  out on the western side of Ghana, and this is basically the tippy top end of our trip, which wraps
• 2:11
  up tomorrow. Why don't we talk about the good things about Africa, and then we can talk about some
• 2:17
  of the bad things. Specifically about West Africa. Dan's looking very apprehensive.
• 2:23
  You're not going to get cancelled for this. No, I was just thinking, actually when you travel
• 2:29
  fast through a lot of places quickly, you see a lot of people, a lot of places, a lot of new
• 2:34
  experiences, it actually becomes kind of difficult to just remember back even a few days.
• 2:39
  What were we doing? What are we doing? I don't know. What are we doing? What even are we doing
• 2:45
  this? I addressed this on the last episode that this was a pandemic era conceived attempt to go to
• 2:51
  the dirtiest and most misbegotten places that we could imagine. I mean, it's ended up being,
• 2:57
  I think my takeaways would be it's much more naturally beautiful than I thought it would be
• 3:01
  in a traditional tropical island paradise kind of way. People are extremely friendly,
• 3:10
  but I think I was expecting that. We are so much more fish out of water than I think any other
• 3:21
  place. We've probably been maybe since we were 19 years old or whatever we were traveling around
• 3:26
  Laos before Laos was a place where anybody went. And I think that's a feature of what we were
• 3:33
  looking for. So I think it kind of ticks some of the boxes in terms of our kind of plan of
• 3:38
  what we wanted, what we wanted to experience. Yes, that's been enjoyable. Yep. And I think we've
• 3:45
  been wise to not get a tour guide the whole way and have a car that's driving us around,
• 3:51
  which we actually are doing for the final three days of the trip because we've got so sick of
• 3:55
  bush taxis where they just cram you. So the trip, for example, from Togo into Ghana,
• 4:02
  we had an eight-hour travel day almost exclusively crammed into, I mean, the first car
• 4:08
  it was a normal car and there were six people in it, three in the back, two in the front,
• 4:13
  passenger seat. Yeah, but we should probably can ourselves luck it. That's right. Sure, it's
• 4:17
  normally it's probably eight. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And we weren't in the front seat sitting on the
• 4:22
  gear stick. That's right. The other notable thing for me from that day was when we were crossing
• 4:27
  from Togo into Ghana to commemorate the time as you were going into the customs office in the middle
• 4:35
  of the bush, in the middle of the jungle with absolutely nothing around, I took a photo of you
• 4:39
  with this sort of customs office in the background and immediately someone pulled at my shirt and
• 4:45
  said, you know, you can't do that. So I kind of knew that might happen. But then the next step was
• 4:50
  we walked into this little tiny building in a... It's a shack. It's a shack. It's a shack. It's a
• 4:55
  shanty. And this is not the main border crossing, right? I mean, the main border crossing between
• 4:59
  Togo and Ghana would be remote enough, but this is the remotest of the remote border crossings between
• 5:05
  two remote countries. Yeah, three-meter-wide dirt track with puddles and potholes everywhere with
• 5:11
  the small shack kind of cut into the jungle. And you know, a six foot four hundred and kilo guy
• 5:18
  who's the obviously the chief of this outpost comes up and literally threatens multiple times
• 5:24
  to beat me. Yes. So taking that photo... Why would you take that photo? I would not argue in here.
• 5:29
  I'm bejewel in the head. Yes. It was a lot of that. It was. And I felt a mixture of fear and
• 5:35
  indignation. That's something so... I was just commemorating, you know, the passing of a border
• 5:40
  and then, you know, the crossing of a country. Also, even if it is against the rules, you know,
• 5:45
  you can't take photos in the customs area at many an airport dance. And it was a shame because,
• 5:50
  as you say, the whole trip at like a notable feature of the whole trip has been the extreme
• 5:56
  friendliness of people. Yeah. And I feel like their first instance of when you make eye contact,
• 6:02
  it can look like there's some concern or apprehension kind of in their eyes. And as soon as you say hello,
• 6:09
  it's so welcoming, so friendly, wanting to talk to you, understand more, instantly within
• 6:16
  five seconds of talking, wanting to swap numbers, start what's happening and promise to call in
• 6:22
  the number of days. Yeah. And take selfies. The kids here are crazy about taking selfies.
• 6:27
  Oh, we're with white people. I mean, we do look stunning, obviously.
• 6:33
  We're strikingly handsome. So who wouldn't want to take a photo with us? But it's cute. It's adorable.
• 6:37
  It is. It is. I think I've got about six or eight WhatsApp threads running, which is random
• 6:43
  people who've met throughout this trip, which is, you know, it's a really nice thing.
• 6:47
  Are you going to marry all of them or just some portion, some subset of them?
• 6:51
  I'll have to talk to my wife first. Maybe just a portion. I might want to get to know them
• 6:56
  just a little bit more first. It's not that understandable. It's interesting that it was actually when
• 7:01
  we cross into Ghana, which is the most developed of the three countries that we're traveling through,
• 7:05
  that that kind of hostility from officialdom began. And it's also the first time I got asked for
• 7:10
  a bribe at any border crossing when I was at the, at the outbound, no, it was inbound, inbound
• 7:18
  customs. Yes. Which is, it sounds so official, but just beyond the shed where he almost drug your
• 7:26
  head in and beat it in. No, that was in hand. This is after crossing to Ghana and the Ghana
• 7:31
  customs officials were very friendly. That's true. They were great. So it was the out,
• 7:35
  you're right. It was a togalese guy who did that. But then the five minutes later on the
• 7:40
  Ghana side of the border was when I got my first bribe request. Would you, would you then pass
• 7:46
  directly on to meet? Well, I was looking away. I said, I had unzipped my suitcase. We are like
• 7:55
  classic, no nothing backpackers in the sense that Dan didn't want to buy a backpack. So instead,
• 8:01
  he was like, let's bring weely carry on bags. And I was like, we're going to look like some,
• 8:06
  we're going to look like Merle Street out of Mamma Mia or like, you know, like the old lady in
• 8:10
  white lotus with our bags dragging through the dusty streets of West Africa. Nonetheless,
• 8:15
  I've relented. So I've got this, this weely carry on bag. And at the customs, which as I say,
• 8:22
  is a very glorified way of saying it's a trestle table under a top. And there's a guy standing
• 8:27
  there and he, and you have to open up the suitcase. And he said, I do have gadgets. And I said,
• 8:33
  what? And then you were the only person who understood what he was saying. Do you have gadgets?
• 8:37
  So apparently he was on the hunt for gadgets. Yeah. Not why? And he said, he said, I don't want to,
• 8:45
  like take everything out of your bag and have it strewn everywhere. So you have to repacket.
• 8:50
  And I said, that's very kind. Thank you. And you'd want you had, you'd already been cleared by
• 8:55
  this stage, right? And I said, that's very kind. And then he said, perhaps you would give us a
• 9:02
  little tip. And I said, no, thank you. And I started zipping up my bag. And he said, do you
• 9:09
  understand me? And I said, yes. And he said, so. And I said, you're asking me to give you money.
• 9:15
  And he's like, yes. And I was like, and I said, to you, thank you. But no. And then I zipped up
• 9:23
  my bag. And then I put my bag off the dress table and I started walking the way. And then he did
• 9:27
  what in West Africa means hey, come here, which is. Yeah. And I turned around. Yeah. And that was
• 9:33
  when you came over. And I said, he was, he wants a little tip. Yeah. But I liked, I liked my excuse.
• 9:41
  Your excuse was great. I reached into, it was half true too. I reached into my wallet,
• 9:46
  which had some euro bills, but maybe you didn't see those and pulled out my last bill from Togo,
• 9:53
  which I was keeping for my kids as a souvenir and said to him, it's my last note. I was going to
• 9:59
  give it to my kids as a souvenir. Yeah, you specifically said my daughter, my daughter can give
• 10:03
  this to my daughter as a souvenir. Do you really want to take this from me? Yeah. And then he said,
• 10:08
  no, go on. So I thought I was like, I'm not even sure he said that that definitively. I think you
• 10:13
  just said, you want to take it from me. Yeah. And I said, you wouldn't do that. Would you?
• 10:18
  Or something to that effect. And then you just put it back in your wallet and we walked away
• 10:22
  and he didn't go. Yeah. Exactly. So that was a triumph. And then the other interesting thing about
• 10:27
  the corruption thing is, is once we started driving in Ghana, I mean, not driving ourselves,
• 10:33
  but being in these, these cramped little cars that function that double as taxis,
• 10:39
  there are roadblocks, maybe every, what, 20 or 30 kilometers, where there were a couple of snoozy
• 10:48
  jondarms often dressed just in shorts and a black t-shirt that says police across the front,
• 10:54
  like you might buy in a novelty store. And the driver, and they just eyeball the car, figure out
• 11:00
  whether or not they want to bribe that particular car. And then they wave them over, the driver gets
• 11:05
  out, gives them money, and they're allowed to go on. Yeah, but that didn't happen once in Benin
• 11:11
  or Togo. No, that's right. Which is a surprise. Yeah, that's interesting, because Benin and Togo
• 11:16
  are supposedly, well, they are the less developed places where you might, it might be more of an
• 11:21
  expectation. But maybe you need to reach a certain level of development for corruption to, like,
• 11:27
  be viable. There isn't the police workforce in Benin to have interesting thesis. You know,
• 11:34
  it's like, well, we'll have to research into that. Well, it's a much more informal, it strikes me
• 11:38
  as a much more informal, informally arranged country. Like the social bonds, we were remarking
• 11:43
  on how the social bonds seem so strong, seem extremely strong. People just stop and start talking
• 11:48
  to each other in the street, even if they don't know each other. There seems to be an enormously
• 11:53
  cohesive cultural arrangement. So maybe you don't need as many cops. It's like a big village,
• 12:00
  except that it's big enough that people don't know each other, but still interact that way.
• 12:04
  That's right. I'm not sure how that relates to the robbery, but... Well, you may need less
• 12:10
  institutionalized law enforcement in a place where villages, yeah, where villages basically
• 12:16
  sort it out for themselves, like tribes sort it out for themselves. Yeah, that's possible.
• 12:20
  Probably. Anyway, when we're in this bush taxi and hear about the third road stop that the guy
• 12:26
  gets to and pulls over and goes out, I say in French to our totalies,
• 12:34
  car mates all crammed in. Are those real police? And they say, yeah. And I say, why is he
• 12:40
  paying them? And one of them laughs and says, this is Africa. Such a obvious... Why would you ask
• 12:47
  that question? He said, he said, doesn't that happen in Australia? I said, no, if a policeman did
• 12:51
  that in Australia, he'd go to jail. And they were like shocked. Yeah, they were absolutely shocked.
• 12:57
  What else... Tell me what else is... Maybe if you think back to how you imagined this part of the
• 13:04
  trip prior to coming, compared to the reality of how you've experienced it, what else is surprised
• 13:10
  here? I thought it was... I thought more of it was going to be dirtier and harder.
• 13:16
  I thought more of it was going to be like what Loma ended up being, which is a big developing world
• 13:23
  polluted city covered in shit. Yeah, and not much of it has been like that, actually.
• 13:30
  That's true. In fact, a lot of fastidiousness in people's upkeep. They're
• 13:36
  prided there. If they have a motorbike, there's a constant washing of bikes. Maybe as expected,
• 13:43
  and a million hairdresses dotted through our hands. That's right. A lot of corpus.
• 13:50
  I couldn't have anticipated the slowness of service. Right. It's inconceivable. I don't understand it.
• 13:59
  How long was it drosh between when we ordered and when we got dinner last night? Yeah, it was two
• 14:03
  and a half hours between ordering and being served. And that's not a problem for them. That's not
• 14:10
  unusual. It wasn't because they were busy. No, there was nothing else to do. No one else to serve.
• 14:16
  It's just... Yeah, you've got to learn some patience. Yeah, you've got to learn some patience.
• 14:21
  So today we ordered at 2pm and said, can you bring the meal at 6pm and the meal came at almost
• 14:30
  seven. Yeah, so that was a good system. So that was great. Maybe we've just learnt the system.
• 14:33
  So order four hours before and you'll get it fired in five hours. That's right. So next time we
• 14:38
  have to order an hour in advance. In fact, we should tell him a day before. I give him plenty of
• 14:44
  warning. Travel hacks. Yeah, travel hacks with Josh and Dan traveling through Africa.
• 14:52
  What else? I mean, one thing that's nice is just that they're such authentic people. I mean,
• 14:58
  like... So Eric our guide in... Well, informal guide in Togo. He was supposed to be a guy who
• 15:05
  would just take us on a motorbike ride for a hike to a majestic waterfall place. And along the way,
• 15:18
  when we get to this waterfall and the middle of nowhere, it looks like avatar. It's like,
• 15:22
  you know, there's nothing around. It's just butterflies and you're in the middle of nowhere.
• 15:28
  Rainforest and we go swimming at the base of the waterfall. Well, I go swimming at the base of
• 15:33
  the waterfall. You're not... You're not stupid enough to risk having a parasite. I've seen too many
• 15:37
  episodes of when parasites go wrong. And they often almost certainly happen in Africa. Yes. And
• 15:44
  they're usually... I get the waterline beneath my crotch. Beneath your crotch. Because apparently,
• 15:48
  if you pee in the water while you're swimming, they swim up into your doodle. Is that what happens?
• 15:55
  And so I whilst... Although it looks like a tranquil setting underneath the placid surface of the lake,
• 16:03
  I was squeezing with all my might to make my dick hole as tight as it's humanly possible.
• 16:07
  There was a lot. It looked... It looked relaxing, that swim. It was actually a lot going on under
• 16:11
  the surface, Dan. You weren't quite awesome. Yeah. Exactly. That was happening. So we go there and
• 16:18
  Eric, our guide, is like... He picks up a red shotgun cartridge. And he... A rifle cartridge.
• 16:25
  And he goes... This is from the hunters. And I said, what are they hunt? He said,
• 16:30
  everything monkeys. I said, do they eat the monkeys? And he laughed. He was like, of course,
• 16:35
  if they didn't eat the monkeys, they'd be swinging all through the trees. As if having monkeys
• 16:40
  swinging through the trees would be a real terrible, terrible thing. And then when on the motorbikes
• 16:46
  on the way back into town, you spotted a chameleon on the dirt road, which was amazing. For some,
• 16:52
  I've ever seen chameleon in the wild, perched up right on these little tent pole legs, bright green
• 16:57
  against the bright red dirt trap. Absolutely still in the middle of the road. Yeah. We missed it by,
• 17:04
  it couldn't have been more than a centimetre. No. But he's so high as well. He's like standing up.
• 17:10
  He's like... Very proud. Yeah, that's right. He's like half a foot off the ground. Yeah. And
• 17:16
  it was so we wanted to turn it take photos. Yeah, I told my motorcycle right at the stop. Yeah.
• 17:23
  Turn around, the chameleon hadn't moved a centimetre. It was still in exactly the same position.
• 17:29
  Yeah. Despite the fact that a motorbike had missed it by a centimetre. That's right. Beautiful
• 17:33
  creature. So Eric takes off his fog, his flip flop, and he starts whacking the ground next to it
• 17:40
  to get it to move. And it starts moving. It starts changing colour from bright, bright green to...
• 17:45
  It looks like the chameleon is looking at the long grasses at the edge of the road thing. And
• 17:50
  that's probably a place where I want to get to right now. And he starts going a mottled shade of
• 17:54
  darker green. The same colour as the grass. And Eric instead of just whacking the flip flop next to
• 18:03
  the... It starts kind of hitting the chameleon. And I said, no, no, let him go, leave him. He said,
• 18:08
  leave him. He said, I want to catch him. I've got a box for him. I've got a box to mount him
• 18:15
  in at home. And I was like, and even when we were walking through this jungle wilderness,
• 18:21
  he drank a bottle of water and then threw the bottle of the plastic bottle of water right next
• 18:26
  to the trail. And you picked it up and you're like, no, no, don't do that. Let's take it. So
• 18:31
  if anyone was under any illusion that like the native peoples are in perfect harmony with the land
• 18:37
  and the only reason why there's a problem is because white imperialists come in and
• 18:42
  dispoil everything. I've got to say, that's not my experience on this particular trip.
• 18:48
  All Eric wants is to be able to throw trash wherever he wants to, shoot as many monkeys as he can
• 18:55
  eat and welcome... I mount the odd chameleon, maybe a dinosaur squashed chameleon with his white
• 19:02
  friends. They're very welcoming and friendly people, but maybe the memo about environmentalism hasn't
• 19:08
  reached these shores yet. That's right, that's right. I've seen it's got a number of really sweet
• 19:12
  messages from him. Have you? Why hasn't he texted me? He's got a side hustle with you.
• 19:18
  I mean, we can't explain it. We've got some kind of adulterous relationship going on. I thought
• 19:22
  we were a threesome. This is polyamory going wrong. So that's nice. And I mean, the whole,
• 19:28
  that sort of emblematic I think of, I don't want to like bring everything back into a Western context,
• 19:34
  but since Africa is the, by definition, the most African place in the world and is really the
• 19:42
  place where one would go to determine the state of race relations in the world. It's incredibly
• 19:50
  welcoming and friendly. And the furthest thing from woke or identitarian kind of racial politics,
• 19:58
  like I don't get any sense that there's any any kind of nationalistic inhibitedness from
• 20:04
  anybody here. They are amazingly open to us. They we are amazingly open to them. There's none of
• 20:12
  the hang ups. I mean, that that you find in in the West racial hang ups and yeah, we've been talking
• 20:19
  your favorite about that subject. What's true, actually, and kind of I mean, I mean, it's hard,
• 20:24
  it's obviously we're just scratching the surface. So it's hard to know kind of what's really going
• 20:28
  on, you know, in the discussions that I had between people here, but at least it feels like that.
• 20:34
  There is an absence of that is more just a mediacy to to engagements and relationships and
• 20:41
  conversations. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it also that extends so far as to us even exploring the,
• 20:49
  you know, some of the most fascinating things that we've done were like today going into the slave
• 20:54
  dungeons in Elmina Castle and Cape Coast Castle. These were two of the biggest slave dungeons
• 21:00
  in the world. Elmina Castle is the oldest European building in sub-Saharan Africa built by the
• 21:08
  Portuguese and the 1400s and then as a fortress and then turned into these completely horrific and
• 21:17
  horrendous slave dungeons where they would cram, you know, a thousand people into
• 21:24
  into an area the size of a hotel room essentially. And they would in pitch darkness with no toilets
• 21:31
  and no water and anything. So they were just living in their own ship for months on end before
• 21:35
  they would get shipped out. And you know, the webbing shown around this place by the descendents of
• 21:42
  the people to whom that was done us being descendants of people who perpetrated that and also
• 21:50
  in several cases against whom that was done as well. I mean, in the case of like Jews and stuff
• 21:55
  if you want to go back to ancient Egypt and the Holocaust and whatever. And that there's none of,
• 22:00
  there's no kind of, I don't know, no sense of hang up sort of legacy of anything other than
• 22:06
  this is a thing that happened. We can all recognize that it was a horrendous thing that happened.
• 22:11
  This is the place where it happened. This is how it happened. This is how it happened. Let's
• 22:15
  commemorate the awfulness. And that's it. Now we're friends. Shall we eat some squashed
• 22:20
  chameleons? You know what I'm saying? That's like, that's it. Great bread. So other than the time
• 22:28
  that service takes, is there anything else bad that you want to say about your experience here?
• 22:34
  No, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, here's the thing, haggling and prices.
• 22:41
  We thought this would be a different country. Different countries have a different culture
• 22:45
  or approach to haggling. Yeah. So we're good hagglers. I can see the myself a master haggler from
• 22:52
  having spent a lot of time backpacking around Southeast Asia and India and Egypt. And
• 22:59
  it was a shame. No shame. No shame, no shame, Josh, which is, you need that as a superpower
• 23:06
  when you're haggling. Exactly. That's part of the chainlessness. I mean, it's fine. But I'm just
• 23:13
  baffled by the West African approach. We would want to take a 40-minute car ride where we knew
• 23:22
  the price is $3 each. And we'd ask what would it cost for us to go alone in the car? And the
• 23:29
  response would be $50 for a 40-minute car ride. Yeah. And like, you can get an Uber in Sydney to do
• 23:38
  that. Right. Pretty much. Right. And we would say, no, no, no, no, no, that's ridiculous. It's
• 23:46
  supposed to be $6. So for the car to ourselves, let's make it 12. And they'd say, and they'd
• 23:52
  just walk away or they'd just be like, it's 50. Yeah, I don't quite understand. It seemed to be
• 24:01
  not just three times more than it should be, but actually 10 or 15 times more. Yeah, that's right.
• 24:06
  And for prices where it's not 10 or 15 times more than just the local price, but actually
• 24:11
  made me a price which would be a high price in Paris. Yeah. And then they let us walk away.
• 24:17
  I mean, even when we're in markets and stuff like shopping for a t-shirt, like we wanted to get
• 24:23
  little outfits for our kids. And they would start by quoting $50 for a little boy's t-shirt.
• 24:32
  Right. And we would say, well, $5. Surely, you know, like, I can get one of Kmart for $5.
• 24:39
  And surely the manufacturing costs are cheaper here. And they'd say, in 45, and I'd say, you know,
• 24:48
  eight. And then I'd just walk away and they'd let me go. Right. Well, why don't they want to sell
• 24:55
  their $50 t-shirt for $8? Well, we had a theory that it was the relative
• 25:02
  porosity of tourists means that you've got such low volume that you then, if one happens to come
• 25:07
  along, you've got to try your dumbest to get best price for that person. Yeah. I think we dismissed
• 25:13
  that theory. There is no good theory. I don't quite understand it. Yeah. And in Ghana at least,
• 25:19
  this is not the case in the less touristed countries that have been in Intogo, but in Ghana at
• 25:24
  least, the instantaneous, universally ubiquitous, mandatory hassling the moment you get out of a car,
• 25:32
  or the moment you arrive anywhere by people running over to you and telling you about their art,
• 25:37
  telling you about their craft, telling you about the bracelet that they're going to make for you,
• 25:41
  telling you about the, I'm holding in my hand, a shell that was, that says, to my proud Australian
• 25:47
  friend, Mr. Daniel, from your friend, Joe Kingsley, have a blessed day at Elmina Castle,
• 25:53
  and then with the date Ghana. And his telephone number written in, written in Sharpie,
• 25:58
  on the inside of the, of the shell. And this should point out, it's a beautiful shell.
• 26:04
  Gorgeous shell. It has now been defaced with Sharpie covering the entire outside.
• 26:08
  Dan, get a bit of methone, a cotton wool, but you'll be, yeah, it'll be a beautiful shell once more.
• 26:13
  I'm keeping it. But so what happened was, we show up at Elmina Castle, get out of the car,
• 26:18
  they come up and say, welcome my friend, welcome, welcome, what's your name? You say Daniel,
• 26:23
  and then we go into the castle, and by the time you've come out, they've mocked up this shell,
• 26:27
  and in exchange for that, they want you to donate to the local soccer, the local kid's soccer
• 26:33
  club, which doesn't exist. And they say, you know, average donation, maybe $300.
• 26:41
  Oh, that's what I like. $300. $300, $350. I'll present you with a ledger, which includes
• 26:46
  the five previous donors. Yes, all in a suspiciously similar handwriting. And donating
• 26:53
  amounts like $300. $100, $150. There's a series of things I like. I quite liked about
• 27:00
  anchoring and the amount of money that a normal donation will have. That's right.
• 27:04
  Having pre-researched your information and then adding it to a shell while you're away,
• 27:09
  and then presenting it as a present. Then gilting you. Yeah, exactly. We're
• 27:12
  going to give you this present now. Could you also help my family? I mean, it's tricky,
• 27:16
  because in situations like this, I always feel terrible because there's obviously massive
• 27:20
  disparity of income, right? I mean, you I want to do the right thing, but I want to do the right
• 27:25
  thing. I also, especially in a country with a lot of potential to rapidly grow its
• 27:34
  tourist infrastructure and its attractiveness to tourists, I don't want to vote with my wallet
• 27:42
  to encourage the most aggressive and manipulative behavior by the people here who interact with
• 27:49
  tourists. I mean, I want to support the good tourism here, and not just by default,
• 27:55
  always give in to the loudest and angriest and most aggressive and most conniving.
• 28:01
  It's always a tricky one. It's always a conundrum. Yeah. I mean, I think
• 28:06
  there are places that we all know you hear horror stories of people just getting so exhausted
• 28:11
  by being hassled, Morocco, you know, Kutah, Beach in Bali. And it's not that these places,
• 28:22
  the tourists stop going to these places, but they do foster the wrong kind of tourists.
• 28:27
  And I'd like to think that West Africa can retain some of its friendliness and charm and attract
• 28:35
  tourists who are after that rather than after. And not even I'm not sure if it's about the tourists,
• 28:40
  so much as the behavior of how you set up a place where tourists come and what sort of things do you
• 28:46
  do, what sort of behaviors do you encourage of the local people to do things, to provide things,
• 28:53
  to create things that are valuable that people want, rather than just an overbearing kind of
• 28:59
  constant bit constantly being chased down the streets. The other thing, another couple of
• 29:04
  observations, every time we've parked a vehicle or our driver has parked a vehicle, no matter how
• 29:10
  sparse the area to park in, there's been a seven to eight minute negotiation with locals who
• 29:15
  come running up to try to get him to park in a perfectly straight line or in some very, very
• 29:21
  specific place. There was a great one today. The car park would have been 100 metres by 100
• 29:27
  minutes. A huge massive area. Yeah, there were two cars in and it's a massive area with nothing
• 29:35
  there and we spend a good three or four minutes backing in and backing out so that there's the
• 29:42
  perfect distance between us and the car next to us as if the place is about to be flooded with
• 29:49
  150 other cars. It's not going to happen, guys. You don't have to worry about it.
• 29:53
  Strange obsession about that. Yeah, and the other, the other is that if they're going to have more
• 29:57
  tourists here, I think the ability to like book places to stay and have the people know that you're,
• 30:08
  have the people basically check their reservations more than once every 72 hours would be good because
• 30:13
  we frequently book, we book places on the same day of the day before and we've never shown up and
• 30:20
  had them know that we were coming. That's right. They're sure it's a surprise. They're surprised.
• 30:24
  You booked it. You booked it. That's right. That's what one of them said. Yeah, I was like, I came in
• 30:30
  and it was a hotel. I mean, I would understand if it's like this also happens in Airbnb's out
• 30:35
  of them and I'll know it, but this was a proper hotel and I come in and I say the, you know,
• 30:41
  we have a reservation and she's like, oh, I'm sorry, we can't find it. What method did you book by?
• 30:47
  I'm like a Airbnb. Oh, wow, Airbnb. Okay. When did you book it this morning? This morning.
• 30:58
  You're in this morning. That's right. I was like, yeah. You had to coach them to open up their
• 31:03
  Airbnb app, which we thought was amusing because there's a solution to that. It's called set
• 31:09
  notifications. That's right. It would be good to tell you someone. Yeah, that's right. The
• 31:12
  notifications would tell you someone if someone booked. Okay. I mean, I think overall thumbs up,
• 31:19
  thumbs down or thumbs sideways on. Oh, massive thumbs up. Yeah, we've probably been complaining
• 31:25
  for way more, but that's just part of that drove you all fun when you were also tired and
• 31:31
  angry and dusty and sweaty at the end of a trip. It's not an easy place to travel, but actually,
• 31:36
  you know what? It is easier than I'd been led to believe. Totally agree. Totally agree. I mean,
• 31:43
  I wouldn't be concerned bringing my young kids back here, traveling around. Again,
• 31:49
  it wouldn't necessarily be easy, but it's not something that couldn't be done. I mean, not only
• 31:54
  have we never felt in danger, certainly not in danger threatened by anyone, apart from the official
• 32:00
  who wanted to drag you in and beat you in the head. But I think just the logistics actually
• 32:07
  have been somewhat easier than I would have thought. Yes, everything takes a long time,
• 32:12
  but things function in a way that there's always a solution. There's always a solution to
• 32:20
  anything because they're quite nimble and chaotic places. You know, they're sort of they're
• 32:26
  anti-fragile in a way, like to use the jargon in a way that countries that are very, very
• 32:33
  precise. If something goes wrong, then all hell breaks loose because nobody knows what to do.
• 32:38
  Like, you know, if the train stopped running to time in Japan, everything would fall apart
• 32:43
  because they used to everything working. Whereas here, it just feels like we spoke to a
• 32:49
  colleague of mine who had been stationed here as a journalist before we left and he was like,
• 32:54
  just expect everything to be a complete shamozzle. You know, when you get, you're going to be
• 33:00
  constantly waiting around for bush taxis forever. The buses are never going to go the correct way.
• 33:06
  They're going to break down on the roads all the time. Nothing's going to work. That hasn't
• 33:10
  really been true. No, that's right. I mean, like you say, you've got to have some patience.
• 33:15
  There's kind of friction at any kind of change-off point in kind of transport.
• 33:22
  A four-hour trip on paper turns into an eight-hour trip, but not necessarily in a non-pleasant way.
• 33:28
  It's just part of the journey. Yep. So the moral of the story is come to West Africa,
• 33:34
  shoot all the monkeys you want and eat all the squash chameleons. Thank you, Dan. Thanks Josh.
• 33:39
  Back to regular programming next week.