Local Tax! Taxtaxtax!

Local Tax

There was a rope across the road. It was actually a few black ropes tied together, with small paper tags hanging from it in random places. There were people clustered around the sides of the rope, and two or three police officers in tan-colored uniforms.
“Hm. Local tax,” I observed, as Katie and I walked towards the rope. It was across the intersection of the Kainkordu and Post Office roads, the main intersection in Koidu Town.
Local tax is relatively new in Sierra Leone. It’s a flat tax of 5000 Le (~1.50 USD) that all residents of Sierra Leone must pay. When you pay, you get a receipt that looks about as official as a receipt from a garage sale, and in order to pass the checkpoints that are (as best I can tell) randomly scattered in time and space throughout Sierra Leone, you need to present your receipt.
It wasn’t our first encounter with the local tax. We’d passed through this same checkpoint the day before, and been allowed to pass without too much trouble.
“Tax, taxtaxtaxtax!” A bunch of men gathered around the edge of the rope looked at us with interest and each started calling out the word tax repeatedly in fast succession. None of them were in a uniform of any kind. However, as we approached and ignored them, the crowd thinned down to one man, who apparently was the man in charge of this rope.
“Hello sir. Local tax!” He said. He was not wearing a uniform either.
“We no faut pay. We no local.” Katie explained.
“No, everyone pay. Local tax, taxtax!”
“No, we no faut pay, we no de reside na Sierra Leone,” Katie continued.
“No, pay, pay local tax. Everyone must pay.” He shook his head definitively. I decided to use a Krio-style debate tactic – raise the volume.
“We no de pay becos we no local. A de reside na Canada, e’ de reside na America, we no de pay. We no de live ya.” Ya means here.
“But you are here right now!”
“Yes, but we nota from ya.”
“But you are not leaving today,”
“That doesn’t matter. We are not residents of Sierra Leone.” I switched to English, because he was using English, and because it’s more intimidating.
“Everyone must pay.”
After our first run-in with local tax the day before, we had talked to Bailor. He had said, “Those guys! They make us look stupid. They don’t know the rules, they don’t know that you pay visas for enter the country, they look like they have no idea what they are doing. I wish I could have talked to them.” We wished that too. It’s really fun to watch Bailor yell at someone who is being ignorant or corrupt.
I remembered something Amhidu told me about officials in Sierra Leone.
“I want to talk to your boss. Take me to your boss.”
“No, I am my own boss, you talk to me.”
“No, let me talk to your boss.” He shook his head. “Do you want to talk to my boss?”
“Yes! Phone him!”
Well, I didn’t actually want to wait for Bailor. We were walking to the clinic.
“Let me talk to your boss or we will leave.”
“Then I will arrest you.” Katie jumped in with an interesting fact from Allan.
“It’s illegal to arrest Americans in Sierra Leone!” It’s nice to be invincible. Unfortunately the man didn’t respond. He also stopped looking at us, so we decided to go. We stepped over the ratty rope and into the intersection, Katie leading the way.
“Arrest them!” The man yelled. I looked back at him, curious. There was a female police officer beside him. She immediately dropped her gaze to the ground, tiptoed around me, and tugged on Katie’s shirt with two fingers. The most feeble arrest attempt ever.
Another male police officer came striding over, and he seemed more in charge. By now we were in the middle of the intersection. He looked at me, and I started explaining.
“We do not need to pay local tax because we are not local. We do not reside in Sierra Leone.”
The police officer didn’t say much, but he also didn’t have the chance, because suddenly we were in the middle of a huge crowd of people, all shouting in Krio. The police officer started listening to another man, and nobody seemed to be paying us any attention. Katie and I exchanged an amused and puzzled glance. An official had commanded our arrest, and instead we were standing in the middle of a huge crowd of people yelling in Krio, none of whom were actually talking to us.
The din subsided for a moment, and an older man stepped towards us. “Please, I know these people,” he said to the police officer. We didn’t know the man. “They work in the clinic in Dorma, they are very good people, here to help, this is all a misunderstanding.” His tone was placating and sycophantic, and kind of annoyed me. It sounded like he wanted to smooth things over because we were special, not because the rules said we were right. He turned to us, “So, you must have some identification, some papers...?”
Well, we had only our National Organization for Welbody ID cards, and I didn’t think Katie had that. Furthermore, that was not how I wanted to work this out, nor did it seem that Katie wanted to settle for ‘special treatment.’
“Thank you sir, I appreciate your help, but we don’t pay local tax because we are not local, not because we are special. Tenki.”
The crowd dissolved back into a cacophony of Krio.
I pulled on the policeman’s shoulder, and Katie said, “Don’t do that!” which was good advice. But I wanted to tell him that we pay about fifty times the local tax for our visas to enter the country.
In a moment, it didn’t matter. The roar of Krio didn’t recede one bit, but the policeman turned to us and nodded that we could go. So we left. The crowd stayed put, yelling and arguing in Krio. Katie and I were bouncing with adrenaline.
“One man said ‘White or black, all must pay!’” Katie told me. That’s frustrating on a couple of levels. On the other hand, it’s nice to be invincible.
Two minutes later we passed Christopher, a Sierra Leonean friend from conducting the surveys. He called out to us “Hey! Christopher, Katie! I hear you have some trouble with the tax collectors,”
We stopped and smiled. “Wow, news travels fast,” said Katie. In the distance we could still hear the dull roar of the crowd yelling in Krio.