Thanks, Nigeria.

Few are ye among my audience, I divine, who have never been chosen to help a fallen autocrat smuggle $7.8 billion out of a war-torn African country you've never heard of; fewer still, ye who have yet to impress a dying, pious and email-savvy benefactress such that she desires to bequeath to you all her worldly belongings. Such offers are obviously testament to your virtue and cunning, traits so powerful they have transcended the impersonal digits of your email address to move strangers with money to distribute to write you.

The more cynical among you will delete without a second thought such magnanimous offers, perhaps even automatically directing all emails from Nigeria into a Special Pleas About Magnanimity folder set aside for the purpose. Now that I am in Nigeria, I struggle daily with the monumental task of finding (a) a computer equipped with (b) a functional keyboard that can (c) connect to the internet on (d) a reliable power source with (e) a backup generator when the power fails. Finding all these things existent in one place simultaneously is truly, in this most religious country, an act of god, and I wish all you click-happy high-speed-dsl-ers out there would not so callously *click!* delete your Nigeria-based offers of money. You cannot appreciate the incredible amount of effort that has gone into each of those S.P.A.M.s.

I abruptly found myself having more than just no-connection frustration in common with email-scammers the other day, however. While the story truthfully is not really about Africa or traveling, perhaps it's still worth recounting as it is probably among the most genuinely 'African' experiences I'll ever have - being accused of spam-scamming.


I've mentioned my ongoing struggle to find and set up housing for the academic year entirely by email, a task that I don't doubt has been made more difficult by the fact that all my requests are coming from a Nigerian IP. Some people do respond, however, like the brisk landlady (who will remain nameless) who wrote me promptly that she'd had several inquiries, and whoever sent her one month's rent as deposit first would have the room. I decided that it was appropriate at this point to drop what I've come to think of as the Africa Bomb, that little piece of information that I'm writing from abroad and won't be able to interview (or probably even phone) much before arriving in Atlanta. I sent the following email, straining to sound as polite, professional, and mature as possible:

Hi [----], thank you for the pictures! They're lovely. I am interested in the room, but as I am currently abroad, I'm not sure how I would go about sending the first month's rent to secure it. As I'm in Nigeria, I don't think any sort of online transfer would be safe for either of us, ha. My mother is managing my affairs while I'm gone; would you feel comfortable with her mailing you a post-dated cheque from Pennsylvania for that amount?

Other than that, do you know if there are any Emory shuttles or public bus stops nearby? I see from Google maps that it is indeed close to campus.

Cheers,

Jana Marie

I debated for a moment on the spelling of "cheque" (check?) before deciding that for the banking term, it really is most proper to use the French spelling, and sent it off with a satisfied sense of accomplishment.


I'm not sure what sort of reply I was expecting, but the one I got barely a minute later will go down in history as one of the most shockingly hilarious emails I have ever received (her emphasis):

I am sorry, but post dated cheques are not acceptable. There are many scammers on line lately, something that didn’t exist in the past. I would only accept a US Money order as a deposit. You see, cheques is not the American choice for this words. We use the word *checks*. If you were really from Pennsylvania, I doubt you would have chosen the English usage of the word. Therefore, your post has a giant red flag swinging from it. Sorry. I must be vigilant and protect myself. I fear that Emory will eliminate this service as it has become a magnet for fraud, mostly coming from abroad.

I actually gasped at my computer, before roaring into laughter. David was dragged away from his own internet business to read and appreciate. A friend on Gchat heard all about it in real-time, who only increased the hilarity by asking with some confusion, "So you're a British person with nothing to do but send fake emails of fake interest to people trying to get renters?" I wasn't so much laughing at the poor self-righteous 'victim' as at the wholly novel experience of not being American enough. (Well, perhaps not wholly novel... I occasionally got the impression of disappointing the Japanese if I demonstrated my ability to use chopsticks.)
I just had to respond to such accusations. David suggested that I embrace the false identity and pretend to be a scammer, writing with profuse apologies and confessions of shame, perhaps an offer of religious conversion; the friend wickedly suggested that I act "ALL KINDS of insulted" and guilt-trip the woman - "tell her you have a learning disability or something and had spell-cheque cheque your email and you're in Africa so it corrected it" - but I couldn't shake a self-righteous impulse of my own to clear my besmirched name. Though the slander didn't matter, and I'd probably never meet the woman - the tone of her email with its emphasis on American Right and Wrong made it abundantly clear we wouldn't work out as roommates - I couldn't let it go because it was just so patently untrue. Of course I was who I said I was!! Besides, I could amass all the proof in the world of my existence - my vindication would be easy.

I began a long reply to Madame, no longer professional this time but as colloquial as possible, expressing my surprise and even slight amusement at being so labeled, agreeing that due to the deposit issue we might not work out but asking her to at least believe that I was a real person. Casting about for a legitimizing US-based source, I gave my mom's work and home numbers, adding the times when she would likely be available. I then launched into my own American history, offering to provide for her my college cheer, names of all the favorite late-night student hangouts in Houston, and the finer points of Beer Bike traditions, before adding a joke I hoped her Southern side would appreciate - that I'd never claim to be a yank from PA anyway, as I was born in Texas.

I sent it off after some considerable double-checking (chequing) for any un-American activities or oddities - no favourites here - but with the new and uncomfortable realization that nothing definitively proved it to be legit. The details I offered, oddly enough, were easily available online - Lovett's cheer is posted right on their homepage - and with only a little bit of effort a foreigner could have reconstructed the history I claimed as my own. But worse, I couldn't think of what else I could possibly say that would prove I really existed!

The reply back, unsurprisingly, was cautiously more polite, if unconvinced:

Jana, glad you responded. I told my friend about my return email to you and she read me the riot act for teaching the scammers. You can’t win. By the way, you made one new mistake in this post. Won’t tell you what that was as once shame on you, and twice shame on me. You will have to figure it out. Of course don’t know how long you have been out of the country. So I will give you the benefit of the doubt.

I do have someone coming this afternoon. She has been corresponding with me for awhile. If she does not take the space for the fall, I will get back with you. I am sorry that I need to be so defensive with you. You would not believe how many scammers are responding to these posts. I fear that Emory will soon discontinue the list as they are surely getting reports of this activity.

"Teaching the scammers"?? Glad the woman had called for backup now - and her friend sounded like an even better anti-spam soldier than she was. I didn't even try to conceal my shock this time, and typed back:

Gah! made a mistake?? I was an English major!! I hope it was some sort of typo because I seriously can't afford for my writing to have gone far downhill if I hope to start a graduate program in three months.

This gave me an idea.. if a really ridiculous idea that only the truly paranoid would have actually pursued. What the hell, I thought, and typed off the name of my department and its administrator, inviting her to call them to verify my existence (though I warned her that we'd never met, and that I'd never even been to campus). I thought about looking up the phone number for her convenience - that would have been the professional thing to do - before realizing she wouldn't have trusted any number I gave anyway (it could have been one of my nefarious confederates!), and invited her to look the number up herself.

Not three minutes after sending this off, I got a chipper, happy email in a much different tone saying that what do you know, she had actually called my department and asked them if she was being scammed from Africa. Awesome. It's not everyone who can have that flickering seed of doubt sown on their legitimacy in their workplace before they even arrive. "Hi! My name is Jana, yeah I'm the Nigerian scam artist you've been fielding calls about for a couple months now. Looking forward to spending the next five years with you!" Luckily, though, it seems the department reacted calmly to Ms. American-English, who then wrote me to report their assurances that I had indeed been "excepted" into their program (you know it's 'cause I'm so "exceptional"), that I was currently in Africa, and that as far as they could tell I had a pulse. Reassured now, the woman was thrilled to talk to me, declaring that if she "didn't really like" the girl coming that afternoon to visit, she would be "honored" to have me as her renter. She was also so kind as to helpfully teach this English dummy her mistake - that I had said "yank" instead of "yankee", obviously marking me as corrupted by the British. "How long have you been out of the country anyway?!" she demanded. But so as not to embarrass me with my poor linguistic skills, she explained, "By the way, I am a grant writer. I work with scientists mainly. Those that English is not their first language. I am very attuned to syntax and word choices."

Yeah, lady. I can definitely see that.

Of course the only problem now was that her satisfaction with me was, unbeknownst to her, not reciprocated. So, after another email in which she (thank the internet powers that be) confessed that her location would be a pretty difficult commute for me, I seized the out and said what a pity! but I would keep looking. But just think: what if she hadn't pegged me as a scammer?? What if her emails to me remained terse but mostly normal, and mine to her sufficiently "American" so as to not arouse suspicion? What if - oh my - I had agreed to formally set up housing with this potentially psychotic and dangerously paranoid landlord/roommate, never knowing until the fateful day I arrived in Atlanta what level of melodramatic fun I had contracted as my home for the following year?? Shudders of fear run down my spine at the mere thought. Wow, Nigerian scam-artists.. you really saved my butt this time. Unappreciated and undermined, it's time I gave them the credit they deserve... Thanks, Nigeria!