Take It Easy With The Bumpsters
By Mohammed L Sillah and Mbaye B sarr
Oct 11, 2006, 08:05 |
With just few weeks to go before the start of the 2003/2006 tourist season paramilitary police have been making massive arrests of people found around the designated tourist areas in the Greater Banjul Area. Hundreds have been reported arrested between Wednesday Oct 4th and Sunday Oct 8th. All this is done in the name of fighting bumpsterism, a word coined by Gambians to describe the practice of mainly young adults who camp around hotels and other tourist resorts posing as professional “friends” in exchange for money. Their aggressive way of marketing themselves has been a major source of irritation for tourists many of whom feel it as harassment. Some reports say that some of the bumpsters, resort to threats and verbal abuse when their offers are rejected. Numerous studies on the sector and published interviews with tourists indicate that the phenomenon is a significant cause of discouragement for tourists in The Gambia.
We cannot disagree totally with the thinking that bumpsterism is a major problem for the tourist industry and that the bumpters often pose serious problems to the smooth and harmonious running of the industry. They harass potential customers away from some bars, restaurants and hotels and they deprive our guests of the peace and quite needed to appreciate the unique ambiance of the country’s social climate. Many tourists are afraid of going out because of the hassles of the bumpsters. Such tourists end up spending their whole vacation within the confines of hotels. This is neither fair to the tourists nor to stakeholders who have invested their money, time and efforts in the industry
But let us not for get the other side of the coin. Many of today’s players in the industry were once bumpsters themselves. Their experience as bumpsters kindled their passion for the industry, provided early experience and knowledge for the sector and provided them with the resources and the contacts to become active entrepreneurs in the business. Bumpster also often act as cross-cultural mediators, interpreters and even facilitators between the aliens and the Gambian culture. Genuine life-time friendships and other forms of partnerships have been known to have also evolved out of many a bumpster encounter.
Bumpterism is as old as the industry itself in The Gambia. Bumpsters came in as early as the late 1960s when mass tourism started with the friendly and exotic Scandinavians. Society then treated the bumpsters as youngsters who were mildly delinquent; nothing so much worse than that. Coming from their far northern enclave, the Scandinavians must have felt that in The Gambia they were visiting what resembled an alien planet, so the services of “cultural interpreters” were well needed. But by the by, things changed. The types of tourists who alighted changed and the very human -material that went to form the character of bumpsters also changed. The all round decline triggered by the Sahelian draught of the 1970s and the economic crisis of the 1980s, increased poverty dramatically and made it a permanent feature of the Gambian Condition. Poverty breeds hardship, evil and crime. The new crop of bumpsters naturally became harder, less friendly and more aggressive in their style, comportment and approach in line with the steady breaking down of societal institutions. Symptoms of these degenerations can now be seen all spheres of social life including school and family life, government, ethics, morale and think what you may.
To solve the problem it is important for the concerned authorities to realize that bumpsterism is here to stay as long as poverty continues so wide in its scope and so penetrating in its depth. The fight against bumpsterism must therefore be incorporated into the greater fight to eradicate poverty, if we are to make any inroads. Militarism does not help in this fight. Bringing in armed soldiers to patrol the tourist zone would not help, as the very soldiers sent would soon replace the bumpsters as ones in uniform. Mass arrests of bumpsters another innocent by standers is a violation of the rights of citizens and a pointless exercise. Attempts to regularize and recognize the practice should be pursued as it is surest way that provides the chances of regulating the practice and curbing some of its excesses.
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