"Bumsterism" Continued: a Night of Clubbing with Aggressive Gambian Prostitutes

Three non-black guys, happily tipsy but fully conscious, causally strolled into a second-floor dance club on the premier tourist strip of the Gambian coast.  The place was jam-packed with locals and the DJ was blaring a beautiful mix of African and American hip-hop.  Before the three guys can get a full look of their immediate surroundings, they all felt female bodies being heavily and intentionally brushing against theirs in a rhythmic up-and-down movement.  Surprised and with female scents aggressively invading their otherwise inebriated nostrils, they come face to face with African beauties lying in their arms...

There was a decidedly seductive yet commercial gaze from each girl as they rub their butts and legs against the private parts of their respective mentally unprepared clients.  No words were exchanged.  Perhaps none needed to be.  Letting male eroticism doing the talking, from their respective experiences, is probably more efficient for business transactions than words can ever be.  Just aggressively throwing their warm, beautifully curved bodies into the embrace of the foreigners, and taking the hands of the still dazed foreigner and putting them to the right places on their bodies...yep, that is how things are done.

All of this would play out in the middle of the dance floor within the first minute of non-black men making their entrance.  And without exception, the whole fiasco will continue until the very minute they make their collective or individual exit, in "triumph" or in exasperation.  Rejecting the advances of a girl as she happily plunges herself into you is not even close to the end of a non-black man's night in the club.  As one girl leaves in disappointment, another will surely follow just as soon as he is allowed to catch his breath and come back to his senses.

So, rather than dancing the night away to the great music, the non-black man in the Gambian dance club would be busy dancing away from all the girls busily courting him everywhere... "Well, isn't that the dream of every guy in a club, to be courted by every woman on the floor?" others with experiences clubbing elsewhere can easily remark.  Unfortunately, the foreigner who is persistent enough to dance with the same aggressive girl would soon find that the only thing more aggressive than their saucy dancing skills is their desire for drinks, money, and perhaps even more...

In essence, the foreigner is just coming in contact with another form of bumsterism, that socio-cultural menace plaguing the Gambian tourism industry and irritating any foreigner walking down any street.  In a conservative Muslim country where cohesion of the extended families is still the paramount element of social integrity and the patriarchal culture of rural regions still manifest itself in the genital mutilation of young girls, the sight of girls throwing themselves at any foreigner in an exceedingly sexual fashion is simply sad, just too sad.

But, for some reason, as condescending as it would sound, the same sight calls for much more sympathy than same behavior than it would in other parts of the world, especially Asia.  There truly is no opportunity for girls out there in Gambia, where the whole country migrate to the coast to eek out a living dealing with cash-flush foreigners.  There are no culture of schooling for girls, no basic literacy, little chances at upward social mobility, and not even chances at striking it rich by luck with lotteries, or by sweat with years of basic menial jobs.

Indeed, these skimpily dressed girls will defy Allah and the honor of their entire extended families and villages to grind on not-so-attractive and sometimes not even that wealthy foreigners, because for them, that is the only way out of their poverty in complete illiteracy in their cash- and resource-poor home country.  This is vastly different from Asia, where prostitutes are just "taking an easy way out" by refusing to follow more proper livelihoods, against the background of (slightly) declining desires for some to move to the West.

Amid the beautiful mix of Afro-American hip-hop, these Gambian girls are still on the prowl, constantly scanning the tangle of superficial alcohol-infused exhilaration for the next group of tipsy foreigners strolling in...they will fight their female countrymen and even a few Guineans and Senegalese for the chance to jump into the arms of these foreigners.  Night after night, and week after week.  They will continue to let their presence felt, perhaps until someone who is drunk enough and grateful enough to make the self-depreciating exercise no longer necessary...