When it comes to travel writing, Matt Lakeman is the man.

Among the better sentences, “Much of Jammeh’s government, reign, and conduct are pretty normal for a terrible African dictator, but at least his billowy white robe and trademark scepter is quite striking.”

And this tutorial took me back to my travels in East, West, and Southern Africa.

“As a poor country gets more tourism, the locals adapt. Many become more welcoming and friendly towards tourists since they represent an opportunity for personal and national enrichment. But other locals become more adept at exploiting tourists, whether through fraud, deception, or guilt.

One form of the latter treatment is to yell at random passerbys, usually to get attention to make some sort of sale or offer a service. This is by no means a unique element of West African travel. Any tourist who has been to Egypt, Morocco, India, Thailand, etc. knows exactly what I’m talking about.

The amateur tourist makes the mistake of defaulting to polite sensibilities and grants attention to the bystander who shouted “Hello, sir!”, “Excuse me, sir!”, “Nice to meet you, sir!” “Where are you from, sir?”, or whatever, and is soon sucked into a time-wasting and generally annoying sales pitch or preamble to a sales pitch. The experienced tourist keeps looking forward, not granting an iota of attention, in order to signal that they will not be suckered in and parted with cash.”

I also learned a new word, “sexpat”.