Cyber cafe life

Here I am; been in Cote d'Ivoire for a few days now and thrilled to be back!

I am here for work + play; so spending a fair amount of time in a internet cafe checking e-mails etc.

On the flight over I met Amy, an Ivorienne who left 10 years ago for the US but is now happily married in France. She told me about her sister who is still in the USA and due to be married here in January. Her sister has met a guy through the internet who lives here in CI, they've never met and apparently the sister has sent her 'fiancee' quite a bit of money over a year or so.

Amy had arranged a meeting on behalf of her mother the day we landed; I'm still waiting to hear from her to see how things went. We were both of the opinion this fiancee was probably just out to grab what money he could and a US green card!

So, spending my time in internet cafes has been quite an eye opener. The amount of PC's being used by 2 people, being quite nosey I realised that the girls were in front of the webcams whilst the guy beside them sent a message back to the guy probably somewhere in Europe telling them how much she loved them! Later this will all get far more serious with requests for money to get a passport and visa; flight ticket etc etc - the girl of course will never be seen again!

There are almost 2,000 messages in two threads alone about this on www.routard.com this one in particular has almost reached 1,000posts alone! http://www.routard.com/forum_message/207462/mariage_et_arnaque.htm