Way to HK - Senegal

27 Mar 2017 . category: Travel . Comments
#WayToHK

Senegal

Arrival

The flights from Casablanca to Dakar are a bit weird, with a 9PM - 1AM flight, and then another even later 11PM - 3AM, so we ended up on the “earlier” one. While in line, we happened to run into someone who was working for the US Government in Dakar. He gave us some tips for what to do, and will sadly appear again soon… I’ll call him Billy for the rest of this post, as I suspect using real name would make him readily identifiable. The flight itself was uneventful: Albert and I each napped a bit, and they served pretty-good seafood on the flight which was nice.

Upon arrival, I walked over to customs and handed over my passport and was asked to put both my index fingers on a fingerprint-scanning device: everything was proceeding as normal. Then, the agent asked me for my yellow vaccination card. Prior to traveling to Senegal, I had received the yellow fever vaccine on the advice of my doctor. As far as we could tell from the internet, this card proving that vaccination was only required for entry into Senegal from yellow-fever endemic countries. But I had gotten the card anyway, thinking it would probably come in handy for future travel. I quickly handed it over, and this is where things go South. The agent said that my vaccination record was missing typhoid and meningitis, without which I wouldn’t be able to enter the country. This was a “very big problem,” and he threatened to mark my passport or something such that I would be denied entry and sent backwards toward the planes. Of course, he then said that I could make all my problems go away by paying a penalty fee. For the low low price of $100 I could enter Senegal! This whole time, I’d been protesting that (1) I had seen nothing to this effect in my pre-trip research and (2) I had no cash on me, whereupon he asked me if I had a credit card. As far as I could tell, this was a simple attempt to solicit bribes, which I guess he was also able to do via Square or something?

Anyway, at this point I decided to step back out of the line and wait for Albert and the US government employee (Billy), though the agent refused to give my passport back. Billy told us that, across hundreds of arrivals into Senegal by him and his friends/family/colleagues, nothing like this had ever happended. We tried to get the attention of another airport employee mannig the customs line, but she only listened to our story and then promptly walked away. I don’t blame her, if blatant bribe solicitation like this is happening, an employee sticking their neck out to intervene is probably not in their interest. Billy mentioned at some point that Senegal is “so much better than this,” so perhaps I got unlucky here. I certainly had not read anything about Senegal being highly corrupt or anything like that. It’s in fact usually held up as an example of stability in the region. We were told it’s the only country in West Africa that has never had a coup. But I was last in line from my bus cohort to go through customs, and probably looked tired, young, and naive, ripe for harassment! Anyway, we all went to talk to the agent, who claimed again that I was in the wrong, and that the information available on the internet is highly out of date. Anyway, Billy had mentioned the custom captain’s name as well as his US government credentials, and the guard finally relented as let us pass into the country “this time.” To be clear, this means that Albert was stamped in without any sort of international vaccination card at all, which is what we believed was the right thing all along. In hindsight, I feel so lucky that we happened to stand in line behind Billy while boarding, not sure what we would have done otherwise.

The whole experience was quite surreal, and the first time I’ve been ever had something like this happen to me across all my travels (Senegal was my 40th country). This is despite traveling man places where I was warned it was rampant (e.g. Transnistria). I will end by saying that, it is possible that we were in the wrong here, but all my research, pre- and post- travel, and Billy’s experiences, point to this being a naked attempt at extorting bribes.

Regardless, Albert then quickly retrieved his bag from baggage claim, and we headed to our hotel, the Ibis Dakar, via their shuttle. The Ibis was, with its fancier cousin the Novotel, part of a walled compound. The underside of our shuttle was examined before we were allowed to enter. And then, in order to enter the hotel itself, we had to put all our bags through a X-ray machine and walk through a metal detector. Though to be honest, this seemed like the epitome of security theater given that the single security guard helped us put our bags onto the belt, and then immediately walked over to take them off…not stopping to you know, actually look at the machine as our bags went by. I’m not exactly sure why this was necessary given Senegal’s general reputation for safety. I thought perhaps the hotel’s foreign guests demanded this level of security. But this experience was oft-repeated over the next couple of days, so it seems to just be part of life in Dakar. I was wanded more in my 36 hours in Dakar than any other time in my life. And often, it seemed clear that everything was just for show. For example, upon entering the airport I had to put my bags through an X-ray machine, but could keep my bulky sweatshirt with me, and was told specifically to walk around the metal detector that was there.

After this rough welcome to Senegal, we grabbed a couple of hours of sleep, hopeful that the next day would be better.

Exploring Dakar

We began the day at L’Ile de Goree, a small island that’s a short ferry ride away from Dakar. It was a historical place of slave trading, though as I understand, its prominence is disputed by historians. The island itself was quite small, and we were basically able to walk around the whole thing and see all the main sites in two hours or so. Highlights included the House of Slaves where you could see the rooms and shackles used to keep slaves. While on the island, we learned that Senegal somehow has a ridiculous aversion to accepting large bills. Our repeated attempts to pay for 500 franc admissions fees (1 USD ~ 610 West African CFA francs) with the 5000 bills from the ATM kept failing. I’m not exactly sure why this was…perhaps they were sick of tourists coming with large bills? But given that they were collecting loads of 500 and 1000 bills, they most definitely had the change they claimed not to… We sadly just missed the ferry back, so we stopped for lunch on the island, which was surprisingly good despite my apprehension given the touristy nature. We had yassa which is a traditional local dish consisting of onions and chicken or fish.

After returning to the mainland, we headed for the Monument to the African Renaissance this huge statue of a man, woman, and child that’s taller than the Statue of Liberty. Billy had mentioned it the day before almost in passing, as something he’d never been to. But, when he said that it’d been built by North Koreans, Albert and I of course decided we had to go. It was built over several years by Mansudae Overseas Projects. Mansudae, by the way, also names the famous monument with the towering statues of the Kims in North Korea. It weirdly seemed to not be very popular with tourists that day, as we quickly felt extremely out of place. The base of the monument was absolutely filled with school groups of varying ages. And as children do, they kept staring and pointing at us. After some confusion, we were able to enter and take the elevator up to the top, which is in the head of the man. From there, you get a great vantage point over Dakar, and can also see the other parts of the statue. Here’s the woman looking up at us:

We then walked through the various exhibits that were on the couple floors inside the base of the statue. Martin Luther King and Barack Obama were prominently featured right next to portraits of the nation’s four presidents. As our guide told us, Barack Obama was the realization of MLK’s dream:

As we continued to walk around, it struck me how prominent the African diaspora, and in particular African Americans, were. Another floor had sculptures and portraits of famous Africans, which included people like Mana Musa and Nefertiti, but also James Brown, Stevie Wonder, and Marcus Garvey. For example, here’s a who’s who of the American Civil Rights movement:

Perhaps this isn’t surprising to others, but I must confess I’m generally not too informed about contemporary Africa. There was also quite a bit of space devoted to the monument being both Pan-African and hopefully future-looking. As the guide explained, the woman’s hand points backward toward L’Ile Goiree and Africa’s terrible history of slavery. But, she is being lifted upward by the hardworking African man, with the baby pointing/looking optimistically into the bright future. There was also a big deal made about how many different African countries had sent dignitaries to attend the unveiling, and/or had prominently displayed pieces of artwork. For example, this throne is apparently from Angola:

And here’s the plaque with the names of the presidents:

(Note the République Populaire Démocratique de Corée). Finally, there was this temporary exhibit about Gandhi on the first floor, which semeed a bit odd to us. We had befriended an American couple while inside, with the wife being an African-American studies professor. She mentioned that Gandhi had been fiercely racist against African people…so it was even weirder… She had also received her doctorate at Northwestern where Albert goes now, small world!

From the monument, we walked west toward the Western tip of Dakar. This is where a lot of foreign activites are located, and expats live. For example, we walked by several UN efforts and also saw the US embassy. Unsurprisingly, it’s also home to several fancy hotels. We were heading this way in order find the Westernmost point on mainland Africa, the Pointe des Almadies. But first, we stopped the simply named “American Food Store.” It was everything an expat might need, from Heinz ketchup to Pampers diapers to Easy Mac. But my hands-down favorite was the display of Solo cups:

Expats clearly have their priorities straight. The prices were actually quite reasonable, perhaps even a bit cheaper than the US after conversion.

Sadly, finding the actual westernmost point was a bit of a disaster. We ended up in King Fahd Palace Hotel amongst a bunch of conference attendees in suits. Somehow, no one really noticed two confused tourists wearing shorts. Then, we were directed onto their private golf course, where we continued to stumble around. Again, no one seemed to really mind that we were just wandering around, though were asked to hold back for a bit as a group played a hole. We finally ended up finding what we believed to be the actual point by walking behind a random building and over a bunch of large rocks piled up on the coast. Doing this in boat shoes after walking 10 miles that day was…non-ideal. But thankfully no one was hurt, and we made it!

We ended our day by going to Le Lagon, apparently the fanciest restaurant in all of Senegal. Another reason to visit off-the-beaten track countries, you can eat the best restaurant in town for basically the same price as a New York City Applebee’s!

Wrapping Up

From here it was back to the hotel and off to Dubai the next day. I probably won’t bother writing a post for Dubai given that I basically just wandered around malls all day. I did go skiing for the first time in 13 years at Ski Dubai though! Surprisingly didn’t fall once, even on their “expert” course.

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