Senegal Arrival Document

It is six in the morning at Dakar’s Leopold Senghor airport. The African sky is pitch black as I descend the stairs from the cabin of the Boeing 767, onto the wide, black tarmac.

I look around.

A young man in uniform stands next to me at the bottom the stairs. He stares at me with a confused look, urging me along with his gaze.

“The baby stroller?” I ask him, in the best French I can muster after months away. At any rate I can only loosely translate the term into African French. Having had the baby for only a month, and the stroller just a bit longer, all of that time having been in the English – or Spanish - speaking United States, I don’t know what to call this thing in French. Neither does he understand what I am trying to say, it would seem.

“Where is the baby’s little car?,” I ask again, nodding at the infant peaking out from my wife’s arms, as I congratulate myself on how reasonable my request sounds. We checked the stroller at the gate when departing, so technically it should be here now. This plane will soon go on to South Africa, and my daughter’s stroller will too, if I don’t straighten this out soon.

“Move on,” the young man finally says, in a manner as sudden as it is brisk, his deeply accented English striking passively at my attempts to communicate in the generally accepted local language. His boyish face suggests he couldn’t be out of his twenties, but his long, thin frame towers over me.

“I checked a baby stroller at the gate,” I insist, this time in English. The overnight flight with a crying, unhappy baby has done little to augment the patience that I would do well to display.

The young man stares blankly at me. “In this country, one should speak French,” interjects a man standing just behind him, frowning at me sternly. I hadn’t noticed him blending into the black of the night. “Suitcase is in the hall inside.”

I give up, and move on.

Next to the bus to the terminal, there is an older woman with a clipboard. I repeat my question to her, and show her the baggage ticket. She calls to the same man who had just sent me on my way. After an exchange in Wolof, one of the more legitimate local languages, he walks slowly off to retrieve the stroller, after casting a long, serious look of annoyance at me.

Not that there is much use for a baby stroller here in Senegal. I remember commenting to my wife before the trip that I couldn’t recall having ever seen one here. It’s just that there’s not much room to stroll. There are few sidewalks to speak of in the downtown area where we live, at least not passable ones. On the rare days we do take the baby out, I would never trust her security to an apparatus not directly connected to my person, given the way people drive around here. Putting the baby in a stroller adds those extra few feet of insecurity in an insecure land. Here, something as precious as a child is to be wrapped and held close to the body, safe and warm. Last year my wife was hit by a car coming the wrong way down a one-way street, though her injuries turned out not to be serious. The car was driven by the chief of the local police.

So this device now being handed to me, having admirably performed its function in transporting the baby around the grand airport promenades of the United States, has done its job for now. In fact it has already become a bit of a hindrance. I keep it folded next to me as the bus rumbles towards the terminal. When the bus stops, I move it back onto the tarmac along with the rest of our carry-on luggage. Not knowing exactly what to do with it now, I unfold it, and place the baby inside.

But to reach the terminal, we’ll need to climb a short set of stairs. So I pick up the entire stroller, baby and all, and carry it up the stairs to the immigration area. A handful of airport employees look on, less confused than amused. Though they may never have seen exactly this stunt, they have seen similar strange things many times before.

We stop inside, and I pause to fill out the immigration forms on a counter along the side of the hall. It’s not long before a soldier comes wandering along, automatic rifle in tow.

“Bonjour, chief, how’s it going?” I ask with a smile, as he bends down over the carriage, his rifle swinging to one side.

He closely inspects the stroller. “This device,” he asks after a contemplative pause, “transports the little one?”

“That’s right, chief,” I tell him.

He smiles. “That is very good. I also have many children,” he smiles. “Two wives, you know. One is very fortunate to have children, thanks to God, and more fortunate still to have such a device as this.”

I smile as I discretely pull the stroller away towards my wife, and put myself between it and the guard. She takes the forms and the stroller and moves towards the line.

We both know where this exchange is headed. If I allow myself to be engaged for too long, we are at risk of seeing the stroller end up as a “gift” for the soldier’s wives.

With the stroller out of the picture I easily beg my leave of the friendly officer, and, headed for the immigration line, take out our passports. The immigration official laughs as he stamps the baby into the country. “Only American babies need passports,” he says with a half smile, before resuming the serious countenance expected of him, as an official of the Senegalese government.

And so we move on to the luggage carousel, though to call it that is to give it an unearned measure of validity.

It’s here, just outside the weapon-secured officialdom of the closed immigration area, that the real adventure begins. The luggage claim area, aside from the first truly Senegalese experience for arriving passengers, is also the workplace of the most senior of the airport hustlers. A clever breed of men who make their living off the bustling economic activity, and resulting urgencies and necessities, of the airport, they are attuned to searching out profit from the confusion of this overcrowded area. For a price any one of them would make a fine ally in the journey to get out of the airport in tact. Without pay, each seems quite determined to complicate to the utmost this part of the trip.

Unfortunately, for me more than for them, I have long had little patience for buying friendships, and so I usually get into trouble here, much to my wife’s consternation.

“Why don’t we just pay one of them a few thousand francs, and they will keep the others from bothering us, aside from handling the luggage” she always used to say, though she has long since given up trying to convince me.

It’s not that I don’t see the logic of her argument. I just don’t see it as simply as that. First, I tell her, Africans have suffered centuries of colonization and economic subjugation. If this were simply about paying a man a small fee to carry our bags, I would happily do it after the exhausting journey.

But my compulsive habit of analyzing even the simplest socio-economic activities leads me to other conclusions. To me, accepting the imposed services of one of these men enforces the preconceived and deeply held belief that light skinned people arriving from abroad are best, and easily, manipulated for economic gain. Perhaps it’s not a belief universally held across Senegalese society, but it is a perspective the manifestations of which make life as a foreign resident here annoying all too frequently, and it seems to be the fundamental premise of the majority of those working here at the airport, at least in the baggage claim area. And I won’t be a part of it.

Of course my refusal to accept help will not go very far in quelling that general belief. There’s far too much evidence to the contrary here.

On a much more basic level though, I’m also trying to avoid an unpleasant exchange at the end of all this. That exchange will go something like this: once this man’s services have been rendered, and the bags safely conveyed by him to their endpoint, there will be an argument about how much should be paid. Any prior negotiation I might undertake or perceived agreement we might arrive at now, no matter how valid it may seem at this point, will be discarded. No matter how much I give him, he will look at it, then me, and scowl. He does this not necessarily in disappointment at the amount remitted, nor because of any personal distaste or irritation with me, but rather as part of a rational and functional plan to get paid more. When I give him more I will then be seen by him, implicitly of course, as the light skinned foreigner to whom money means so little that I am willing to give more on top of the outrageous amount I already paid for simply carrying my bags for me. And still, there will be no way that, after contracting his services, I can make him go away happy.

I don’t want to get into that situation. So I carry my own bags.

But how to coherently and quickly explain such a relatively complex and unfortunate socio-economic structure to the man who, seeing me taking the bags one by one off the carousel, is now grabbing at my suitcases without any consent whatsoever, as if sent specifically from some bag-handlers’ headquarters to help me with my luggage?

“No, no,” I say, quickly waving a finger at him. He’s unfazed by my resistance, and moves quickly on to the next target, a light-skinned man dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, who looks to have gotten off the plane in the wrong city. The presumably Hawaiian man looks on perplexed as this stranger rearranges his luggage.

I shoo a second “helper” away as I roll the overloaded baggage cart towards the customs area. The jilted attendant scowls at me. My theories are reinforced by the rapidity with which his feigned friendliness turns to anger as the realization that, despite my light skin, I am not the equivalent of an ATM, sets in.

The man makes a spiteful but half-spirited attempt to block my progress, but I bump him out of the way with the luggage cart, and proceed towards the x-ray machines at the customs area.

These machines are the final step to freedom from the airport bureaucracy. I’ve never been sure exactly what they serve for, except of course to x-ray the luggage, though usually the attendant is paying scant attention to the results. I have never been stopped or questioned, no matter the contents of my bags, but perhaps that is special treatment as well. An acquaintance, a political activist and strong critic of the government, tells me he has had his anti-government books confiscated here several times, though his story is never quite the same, and he has never properly described how an x-ray could identify potentially slanderous material, though I suppose there are plausible explanations.

At any rate, if we can navigate the traffic jam in between us and the machines, made all the worse by the unorthodox form of line-making that anyone who has travelled in a developing country will be familiar with, then we will be out in the open.

Unfortunately no one seems to recognize the purpose of the baby stroller, and it takes a few bumps from other luggage carts as my wife pushes it ahead. Fortunately our daughter seems to think this is all a game, and she looks about excitedly at the hubbub surrounding her, like a little queen on tour in her carriage.

Before long, after emptying the luggage onto the x-ray machine, then stacking it once more on the cart, we’re through, safely, to the outside world. Just outside the baggage claim, a perimeter has been fenced off, to be used only by airport patrons. Here, only the hustlers with the wherewithal to pay off the police that guard the perimeter can get in, so despite the still numerous taxi drivers and bag handlers in the way, we manage to find the driver who has been sent by my wife’s employer.

But he, and the car he has brought, are on the outside of the perimeter, and we will need to be too, with our luggage, if we are to get home and get some rest.

I wheel the luggage, and my wife the baby, close to the gate which provides the only exit from the relative safety of the perimeter.

Here, where the gate opens to the street in front of the airport, an army of hustlers stands in waiting. These are the airport’s final line of defense, and it will be our last, but most difficult test. Mostly teenagers without the means or experience to get closer in, they are the economic scavengers of the airport hustler set, picking off the remains that those inside have left. But, like any good apprentice, they have learned all the tricks of the trade. An armed guard keeps them at bay, but only menially. If we are to get to where the chauffeur waits, just beyond, we must get past them.

They see us coming from many yards away. The group, in a semi-circle blocking the exit, starts to bustle about in anticipation. It is here that having contracted one of the baggage handlers inside would have been best. He would have kept them at bay. Of course I could just pay these boys to get out of the way, or even to help, but what kind of a lesson would that be for these youths?

I tell my wife to wait as I take the bags out one by one. Only a narrow street now separates us from the car.

I grab the first two suitcases and head towards the wall of boys blocking the entrance. I head straight into them. The wall gives way partially, and I am out onto the street. As I move I am surrounded by a fluid sea of adolescents anxious to discover my needs. I remember how nice it is be in a country with a culture where open thievery is so deeply scorned. One less worry.

“Taxi?,” a few of the boys ask in an a capella chorus, as others try to deftly pry the bags from me, to help with the remaining five feet of the journey. I push them gently away, but they follow intently.

As I lift the bags into the car, a young man puts his hand under one and does his best to help shove it into the trunk, but instead knocks it onto the ground. A few other boys scramble to help me pick it up again and place it in the trunk. Then the first boy puts out his hand. Our driver berates him in Wolof as he secures the baggage.

I push my way back across the street, avoiding the passing cars and spinning around the boys, who constantly seem to be contriving to block my path.

Back inside, I pick up the other two bags. In much the same way as before, I manage to get them across the street and into the car. Now just my wife, and the baby, remain on the wrong side of the fence.

She has already started across the street pushing the baby stroller. One of the younger boys darts towards the baby carriage, and with a jerk, snatches the handle and begins to pick it up recklessly.

I lurch over to the carriage and push him away. He shoves me as hard as his little arms can push. “Bad, bad, person,” he cries disapprovingly, but the other boys are on him in a flash. One of them clobbers the boy across the side of the head. They won’t let the situation get out control. Their position here, and their economic well-being, depends on respecting a certain level of civility.

I use the respite to usher my wife and the baby to the car. With them safely inside, we are ready to go. Several of the boys have now reappeared next to the passenger door, pushed up close to me, hands out. They still require payment for this hassle.

I spot the boy who separated his younger companion from the baby carriage. I reach in my pocket and find a coin worth five hundred West African francs, more than a dollar. It’s far too much, and I realize that by giving it to him, I am incentivizing the counterproductive behavior these boys have just displayed. If everyone would stop paying to be hassled, the airport would become a much more civil place very quickly. But I’m still searching for that middle ground.

I give the boy the coin, knowing it will be shared among the group. He looks at it with a frown. “Very small,” he says, and extends his hand again. But I’m not wiling to negotiate further.

“Bad person,” he yells at me as I wedge myself through the door and into the car. I’m not surprised by his assessment of me.

“Let’s go,” I say to the driver. “It’s quite difficult to negotiate these airport crowds,” I say, a bit saddened and disappointed, as many times before, to have still not found a more agreeable approach to the airport arrival.

“You should just ignore them,” the driver says. But I know there’s no dignity in that for anyone.