Landing in Dakar

We flew from Paris on a large Boing 777 airplane.  We were in the middle section over the wings so we saw almost nothing of the landscape we flew over.  This was too bad.

Before we landed, Skylar and I talked about the line at the airport and how long we thought the wait was going to be.  He ballparked 45 minutes, I ballparked 2 hours.  Turns out I was pretty close.

We walked down stairs from the plane and boarded a bus.  Then, we flowed out of the bus into an air conditioned space where most of the waiting happened.  When we had entered France, there was a long, serpentine walking path that made it clear who was in front of whom.  In Dakar, there were only about 15' of clearly marked lines, leaving the other 80' of the room with amorphous lines.  And so, it quickly became apparent that the best strategy was to pack tightly with the people infront of you so the people who were trying to cut in line couldn't get in.

There were many people trying to cut in line.  The woman in front of me did a nice job scolding the different me who tried to push in.  I kept our bags tight to her but the two young european woman behind us didn't press so well.  So, in the 1/2 hr that it took us to finally get to the portion of the room that had ropes to mark the line, these young women stayed still while people cut in line in front of them!

While this was going on, to our left was a way to walk around the people checking your passport.  From time to time, people would approach the guards at this rope and talk to them and periodically, a flood of 15-20 people would be let through.  We did not understand why they were going around or what it meant, but we stayed in line and eventually had our documents stamped.

The kids were quite unhappy by this time.  We were about 1.5 hours into the experience.  The space for the stamping was a small hall, about 3' wide.  There were 3 people with their windows and scanners lined up in this hallway, working with different groups of people.  In this narrow hallway, people seemed to be coming and going and trying to squeeze around us.  Adding crying children (ours) into the mix didn't help.  Julienne did a great job telling them a story trough this whole time.

Then, after the passports, we needed to get visas.  Well, this included sitting still for photos.  By this time, Skylar was wimpering in the corner, Julienne was desperately trying to figure what the two officers wanted, and I was wrestling with Sylvia, trying to get her to face the camera for a photo.  The closest we got was her clenched eyes and open, screaming mouth.  The officer just shook his head and threw up his arms.  Finally, the other officer gave in a simply waved us past.

Two hours after we'd landed, we had our papers and were into the baggage claim area.  Here, almost magically, appeared a man holding our names.  (Or close approximations with Julienne Webster and Marc Haryss typed out neatly on a piece of paper.)  Then, quite surprising to us, our bags were still going 'round and 'round on the baggage claim, all 4 large pieces of luggage and both booster seats.

Then, we have customs.  While in line, I was so preoccupied with the stress of the situation I couldn't think of much else.  As soon as we saw the kindly driver with our names, I started noticing the place we were and started chatting with Julienne.

"Hey, " I said.  "I just got my brain back!"  Simply having the a local person to follow changed the whole feeling of the experience.  Custom bag check consisted of sending all out baggage through an x-ray scanner much faster then any 3 security people could watch for contraban, let alone the one guy who was looking at us and not the machine.  People would hurriedly drop their bags on one end and run to the other end and grab it before it dropped to the floor.

But, now that we had a local to follow, I found this amusing instead of bemusing.  I knew we were on the glide path to our new house.

Outside, two more things surprised me.  First, the principal of the elementary school was still waiting, over 2 hours after landing.  It was nice to see someone we actually knew.  And second, just how many people lined the road leading from the airport exit.  There must have been at least 200 people lining the fences along the road, waiting for others to emerge as we had.

Later, after talking with other new teachers, we learned that our experience was not the ordinary.  Our plane, a large one, landed before the previous plane load of people had been processed.  Then, while we were still in line, another plane landed, creating a log-jam.  Other people who had arrived early the next day spent about 20 minutes in line.  No shouting, line cutting, or crying children.  Hopefully we get that experience on our next arrival to Dakar.