Niall's Travel Blog

Swakopmund's Scamsters

Swakopmund's tourists (myself included) attract a lot of attention from purveyors of crafts, gems, sunglasses and fake clothes. There are some funny characters who must make a fortune off the less street wise of the foreigners and here's how they do it:

Key Ring Sellers
These guys are geniuses! They come up to you all smiles, shake your hand and ask you your name. By the time the first syllable is out of your mouth they start to carve your name into a keyring and open the bidding at a ridiculous price! I was lucky that when I first met one
he didn't know how to spell Niall and had to write it out in the sand at which point I realised what was going on! Once he's carved your name in and you don't want to buy it he starts to make you feel bad for ruining his keyring and the price drops dramatically to about one
hundredth of the first asking price when you are about to drive off. It's all put on though - he just carves off your engraving and moves to the next unsuspecting walking wallet!

Animal Drawings
I was sitting outside having a meal watching a pretty talented sketcher finish off a sale with some tourists. When he's finished he comes over and starts talking to me, giving me his story so far - he's a bushman from Spitzkoppe mountains (more on these soon) and has made the transition from a poor farmer's son to a poor artist. He tells me an American tourist was looking for a drawing of an Oryx but he'd never seen one before and asked me if there was one in my lonely planet book. I lend him the book and he goes to draw it. Five minutes later he comes back which a good sketch and puts it down on my table -it's a present especially for me. I tell him that I couldn't possibly accept it as he'll need to look at it if someone asks him again for an Oryx but to no avail, it's a present.

We have a chat and then he starts telling me that times are hard for artists in Swakopmund and he wants to go back to his hometown to teach kids how to draw but he desperately needs supplies. Reckoning this is as likely as him opening a Parisien gallery I commiserate with him and again say I can't accept the drawing but that he should sell it for the kids. He changes his tune and now needs some bread, a shameless tug at the heartstrings given he's just watched me eat a nice meal! However, I'm fairly ruthless with this kind of stuff, offer to give him back his drawing, shake his hand and make my way back to the hostel where I hang the drawing up on the wall! Later I compare it to the lonely planet photo and realise that it is a replica of another oryx photo later in the book that I didn't show him!

posted by Niall at 4:03 p.m.