What is Senegal known for?

“The lady in the  airline office was very polite and she really tried to be helpful. But I told her that the conditions she had laid out were just too harsh for me. She had told me with such finality that the only way I could disembark from the Lagos bound aircraft in Accra was to pay $300 for a one way ticket and discard the return ticket I had to Lagos”.
 It was May the 7th 2011 and I sat in an economy seat of a Lagos bound   737 Passenger plane. I was fuming because we were on the ground at Kotoka Airport in Accra and even though I had a morning class on “Business Time Management” at the Graduate School for Leadership and Governance in Accra, I could not disembark because I had vehemently refused to pay for another ticket that would enable me board the same plane from Dakar, only to disembark in Accra. For me it did not make sense. Okay so my agent had purchased a promotional ticket that was marked Lagos-Dakar-Lagos, he had unwittingly booked the return date to Lagos to be Sunday whereas I was due to be in Accra Saturday morning. I had made frantic attempts to reroute my journey. Speaking broken French, I had launched myself from my hotel room in Yur Grande area of Libertie 5 as early as Thursday morning to the Leoplod Sedar Senghor Airport to fix my ticket.  On arrival at the airport I was told that I should come at 10pm to meet the Airline crew. They did not have a standing office at the airport! Instead of going back to the hotel I decided to go on a search for their offices in Dakar. I was told by Airport Information that the corporate office of the organization was located down town on the Mayor of Dakar road. I was able to describe to a taxi driver where I was going. He told me the office was “down town” and characteristic of city centers around the world ,we soon found ourselves in slow moving traffic.
During the drive I got into a discussion with the driver and was able to ask him characteristically: what is Senegal known for. His answer was stunning: Coffee and Cigarettes! He said the men smoked too much and that they also imbibed too much caffeine. This was no exaggeration. I noticed that the weather was chilly the night I had arrived.  The airline flies into to Dakar Senegal at 2am Local time! Such an unholy hour. The sights around the airport with the lights beaming up are quite impressive, especially if you have a window seat and are able to gaze at the millions of lights and colors that smile up at you after almost four hours of a non-stop flight to the Senegalese capital.  Home at last!  And as early as 6.30am if you take a peek outside your hotel window you would find Senegalese, mostly men both young and old walking the streets with either a cigarette drooping from their lips or a cup of coffee held in one hand on the trot.  Their appetite for caffeine and nicotine seemed to be insatiable.
Soon we found the airline office and not wanting to be left alone in such unfamiliar territory, I told the taxi to park in what appeared to be a no parking area. The lady in the  airline office was very polite and she really tried to be helpful. But I told her that the conditions she had laid out were just too harsh for me. She had told me with such finality that the only way I could disembark from the Lagos bound aircraft in Accra was to pay $300 for a one way ticket and discard the return ticket I had to Lagos. For me, this was a waste of money. To change my ticket to Saturday Morning I had already been billed a cost of $50. The world at that moment seemed to be filled with ironies. I was supposed to speak on “Business Time Management” in Accra, yet I could not make the appointment on time.  And my beloved  airline was willing to strip me of an additional $300 just to get off the aircraft in Accra!
I told the lady at the airline office in Dakar that I would never fly  her airline again! She seemed naturally hurt by my statement as she complained that it really was not her fault that it was airline regulation. As I reminisced on these facts on the ground at Kotoka International Airport I made a call to the Graduate School just to be sure that my replacement had arrived on time. Discovering that it was virtually impossible for me to make the appointment, I had told an associate to take my place in class. In spite of me having a day off speaking, which I enjoy very much, it was a very painful experience for me and I have still not forgiven  the airline in question.