Arrival in DAKAR

I’ll give everyone a brief rundown of how things have gone so far. After five long weeks of Tamara traveling and partying around Finland and Ireland and me riding my flashy tricycle around Victoria giving rides to tourists,we met up in London at Canada House in Trafalgar Square. From there we went to Her Majesty’s Royal Theatre and saw the Phantom of the Opera. The next day we met up with Gordon and Maddie, two of my friends from the Legislative Intern days. It was very cool seeing them in London, and Maddie picked out an exquisite restaurant that gave us a view of Trafalgar Square and much of downtown. We walked to Hyde Park then made our way to Heathrow for an evening flight to Dakar.

On the flight to Dakar there was a Belgian sitting across from us that had all sorts of stories to tell about Senegal. He had lived there years back and now returned regularly to see friends. He talked about the government corruption, about the regular rolling blackouts that happen day and night through the city and about the friendliness of the people. But what stuck out in my mind was fact 1: that the weather was going to get cool, even cold, come November and fact 2: when this happens all the little bugs, spiders and critters invade our homes and get cozy with the inhabitants. So I guess I was looking forward to some cool weather, seeing I knew from last time in Benin that it can be hard to do anything when it is constantly 35 degrees and humid, but on the other hand the thought of battling with exotic bugs in my bed wasn’t appealing.

In the seat behind us there was man from Dakar who was returning home with four laptops. He had packed them with his carry-on luggage and was trying to get me to give one of them to Tamara so she could take it across customs for him because otherwise he would have to pay a fee at the border. Now, I’ve never actually watched Broken Down Palace, but I know the plot line from trailers and I didn’t want Tamara to do a Claire Danes and end up stuck in jail for trying to get some hidden substances across customs in a foreign country with a foreign language she didn’t speak. So I had to politely tell the exporter-importer that no, we would not be able to take his laptop through customs. Though really, I didn’t suspect him of trying to pull a fast one on us, I just figured that if this sort thing happened regularly he should be able to ask a Senegalese on the plane to take it through customs for him. Eventually that’s what happened. He also gave me his number and said to call him and he and his wife would take me and mine out. Oh, that’s right… Tamara and I are pretending to be married while we are here. We read somewhere, probably in the Lonely Planet, that Western women tend to be approached often by the relatively uninhibited Senegalese men and are proposed marriage to, etc. The best way to avoid this seems to be being already married.

So my “wife” and I got off the airplane and made our way through customs without any problems. It felt familiar coming into an African airport. The Dakar airport is similar to the one in Cotonou, and the same blast of heat and humidity, even at 3am, slapped us in the face as we walked down the steel steps to the tarmac. The other side of customs we were set upon like two little lambs by a pack of salesman and currency exchangers, hawking their wares and telling us where we could get a ride and where we should stay. The situation would have been overwhelming if it wasn’t for the fact that I knew that Amadou, the project supervisor for the internship in Dakar, was going to meet us at the airport. The only problem was that I didn’t see him anywhere. Tamara first attempted to walk outside and look around for him, but we were instantly swarmed by the salesmen I mentioned. So we retreated back into the safety of the arrivals gate and waited. After 15 minutes it seemed clear that Amadou was not going to be coming up to the airport door to meet us. So I took off my backpack, left it with Tamara and went out into the parking lot to look for our ride. Turns out unless people are selling things they aren’t allowed too close to the airport terminal. So this whole time Amadou had been waiting behind a barricade about 200 ft from us. We met Amadou, were once more swarmed by young guys asking for money and got into a Taxi. We arrived out our new home at the end of a long and dark alley. Amadou found a woman I assumed was a nun, because we were living on clergy property, to open the door to out little house for us and let us in. He said he would see us in a couple of days and headed off. It must gave been around 4:30am. Voila our arrival at Dakar.