Sunday, March 4, 2:15 a.m.
“We’re in Africa !”
We have landed in Dakar , Senegal and this time N’Dieye, one of our filmmakers is the first to shout in celebration.
Even though this is N’Dieye’s first visit to Senegal , she feels a special connection. Her name, which she says means strength of a lion, is in Wolof, the native language of the Senegalese. A priestess-in-training, N’Dieye is happy to be in her ancestral homeland and has her heart set on finding a body of water to do a bathing ritual.
As soon as we walk through the gate we feel something different than what we felt when we were in Johannesburg . Here we feel we are in Africa , in the real sense.
Nanga Deff! Mangee Fee Rek!
Bon Jour! Ca Va Bien!
It is 2:30 in the morning and Leopold Senghor Airport is full and bustling like a marketplace in the middle of the day.
Strangers bombarded with greetings of “How are you? Fine, thank you,” in Wolof and French. Their smiles are fluorescent and their skins are a reflection of the deepest night.
Mbaye Faye Ndeng, the brother from the transportation service that Juanita hired to get us around for the week meets us at the gate. His job is to help us get our luggage cleared and loaded securely on our bus. Our driver will be Cheikh Mbacke Top and Fallou Mboub will be our guide. Mbaye, who is wearing a knit cap and a brown sweatshirt with “Timberlake” written on the front, catches our attention by flashing a sign with “BZB” (Juanita’s nickname and logo) printed in bold letters.
He leads us through the crush of people in the airport and out to our bus. He gets into a shoving match with a man who grabs my bags and jockeys for an opportunity to provide uninvited service to the new group of Americans on the scene. As several others join in the brief altercation we keep making our way onto the bus.
“I ain’t scared,” deadpans Danielle our assistant producer as she claims a seat in the front. Danielle a communications major at North Carolina A&T, grew up in Anacostia’s inner city. She is no stranger to random acts of fisticuffs.
“This is just like southeast,” she said.
From the moment we stepped off the plane, the high spirited atmosphere energizes us and has us acting silly.
There was something about Dakar that bought out da ‘hood in us.
“This is so funny,” said Beverly marveling over the feisty and familiar way the Senegalese interacted with us. “This whole energy thing is amazing.”
It was Beverly who called attention to the smell that permeated our weathered bus.
The ‘air quality’ left much to be desired.
Diplomatically she asked whether anyone noticed “the fumes.”
My response is sarcastic. “Do you mean aroma?”
Danielle cuts to the chase.
“Let’s not try to romanticize it,” she says. “It stanks!”
Robin echoes Danielle’s candid but correct assessment. “I love Africa all the same,” she said. “But it stank up in here!!
Derek, the other filmmaker on our crew was raised in a middle-class, multi-cultural community in Columbia , Md. This is his first trip to Africa . On his first day in Johannesburg , I asked his thoughts. He was not impressed.
“I can’t believe I’m in Africa ,” he said looking rather disappointed. “It hasn’t hit me yet. Maybe it will hit me when I see less white faces and more black faces.”
In Dakar , Derek got more than he bargained for.
“I know that I said, ‘take me to black, take me to black,” he said, sitting on the bus with an expression that looked slightly stunned.
“But this is past black,” This is oblivion!”
Robin, our senior producer who has been good naturedly chiding Derek from the beginning, couldn’t let him get away with that remark.
“That’s because you got too much white boy in you,” she cracked.
Juanita is amused by it all.
“Welcome to Dakar ,” she says. ”It’s completely different. Completely different.”
