Ahh back to Dakar. I missed it here, especially the unscheduled run-ins with unintentional comedy.

You know you are headed back to a place that shakes your foundations of logic when you start to see signs like this during your layover:

It’s blurry, but that makes it all the more appropriate. I’m pretty sure my time in the Istanbul airport was one big lucid dream; why else would I be taking photographs in a bathroom stall?

Hello again, African Renaissance Monument. Glad to see you haven’t tipped over during the rainy season. Yet.

The plane parks and I can feel the fight return inside of me as the mass of boubou-clad matriarchs move about the cabin with mercenary relentlessness. After seven months of cultural trial by fire, I know these women will have no problem bowling me over if I leave even a centimeter of leeway in any semblance of a queue. So I take my 20 lb football (really, my carry-on) and weave my way through the crush of people, ensuring that I will arrive first at the immigration line. I dart off the transfer bus and am first across the threshold of the terminal. Touchdown!

You laugh at my wargaming techniques, but really these pre-planned responses can be huge sanity savers. Don’t even ask me about how I strategize acquiring “small money” in order to gain purchasing power in Dakar. My problem-solving receptors are always maxed out when I’m in west Africa.

So I’m clear through to the baggage area in about 60 seconds- alhamdoulilah! – but my ability to control my destiny ends there. Just because I’m the first person through douane in no way means that I will be first out of the airport. Looking over at both of the airport’s rickety baggage belts, I see that the only thing laying on there is one recumbent airport worker. Nice.

As an Irish-American, I know that Murphy enjoys permanent status as a family member that I’d rather not have around. This means that if I breeze through immigration, I will surely be the last person to leave the airport. Murphy Ndiaye, my Senegalese teacher re-baptized him when I explained the concept of Murphy’s Law to her back at DLI. What Marie Diop didn’t realize was that once she gave him a Senegalese last name, she was unwittingly approving his application for residency with me here in Dakar. Damn.

So it is not long before the bousculade of West African travelers clear customs and descend upon me in the baggage area. I admit defeat as they clear me away from all prime baggage retrieval spots with their newly-acquired rolling armament-  commonly referred to as luggage Smarte Cartes. Sigh. Do all these people have day jobs as Dakar taxi drivers- because this suddenly looks like the streets of Plateau (downtown).

I finally get my bag and yes, it’s one of the last ones to arrive, grâce à Murphy. It’s good to be back in Senegal, all things told. 

Only a few more wake-ups and Ramadan will be over. The moon fanatic locals (no, I’m not using the word lunatic)  are keeping a keen eye on the skies to see when they can resume a normal eating schedule. After that, I can’t blame Ramadan anymore for any of the mildly inexplicable encounters that I deal with on a daily basis.