Ask the Pilot

The requirement to stay in motion is especially vexing because the terminal is so small. One becomes a human pinball, wandering from the departure checkpoint, back along the kiosks again, past the nonfunctional ATM and on toward the dirty staircase that leads to a second-floor arcade. At the top of the stairs is a sign with an arrow marked "observation deck," but don't get your hopes up. If it ever existed in the first place, it is now blockaded by a corridor of stalls hawking animal carvings and cheap souvenir jewelry.

The upper-level balcony is quieter and less crowded than the dungeon below, but hiding up here is forbidden. No sooner did I put my bag down and lean against the railing than a security guard sent me downstairs again. No loitering.

There aren't any signs to indicate it, but a pair of restrooms are located in a basement annex beneath the main lobby. The men's room has troughs, not urinals. I'd gone down to change into a new set of clothes -- never an easy proposition in a bathroom -- and had my backpack propped on the floor, partly unzipped, when a man approached. He'd been peeing at the trough a few feet away. He smiled, pointed into the bag, and in broken English inquired as to which items I might be eager to part with. "Cadeau?"

It doesn't need to be this way. People do many things at airports: They eat, they shop, they bid farewell to loved ones. But more than anything, they wait. Airports are, if nothing else, waiting stations. Serving that purpose shouldn't be a difficult or expensive task, especially in a country where overall expectations aren't high. A modicum of cleanliness and functionality -- somewhere to sit, something to look at, a bit of peace and quiet -- will get the job done. Heck, string up a tent, give us a patch of grass to sit on and maybe a stand selling drinks, and the majority of us would be perfectly happy. At DKR, one finds almost nothing useful, comfortable or welcoming. There is only squalor, an unnerving sense of confinement, and to some extent danger.

The only option for solace is the terminal restaurant, located up a second set of stairs leading above and behind the check-in hall. To find it, I needed to step over three semiconscious derelicts and force my way through a gaggle of chain-smoking Chinese businessmen.

Finally, seated at a rickety table, I was free to relax -- with a view of the apron and a decent meal to boot. Surprise of surprises, my meal may have been the tastiest I'd had anywhere in Senegal. Around me, the tables were packed with boisterous tourists, downing steaks and offering up toast after toast to who knows what, clinking their goblets of wine. The wine seemed a bit incongruous, all things considered, but what do you expect in a former French colony? The waiters were polite and gregarious, and the room held a strange, muggy sort of dignity. For obvious reasons, I didn't want to leave and ordered a second course to extend my stay.

Out the window, I watched an Air France 777 loading up for its overnight run to Paris, its white hull gleaming beneath the tarmac spotlights. A Cape Verdean commuter plane came and went, as did a South African Airways A340, making its middle-of-the-night fuel stop between Johannesburg, South Africa, and New York. In the distance, in a disused hangar, I spied a battered, cannibalized A300 in the faded green decals of Air Afrique. Once the biggest and proudest airline on the continent (with a nearly perfect safety record spanning four decades), Air Afrique has been defunct since 2001.

In an article a few years back, set at Kennedy airport in New York, I described the thrill of watching an Air Afrique jet preparing to depart one evening for Dakar. "What I wouldn't give," I wrote, "to be on that flight, sandwiched in the back of the overbooked Airbus with all these luggage-laden Africans."

So now here I am, and I'm checking my watch every five minutes, because how I cannot wait to be in the back of an overbooked Airbus ... getting the hell out!

Which is no indictment of Senegal. I enjoyed my brief stay -- Goree Island, the delta and its island villages, the unworldly vistas of baobab trees. But it certainly is an indictment of Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport.

Critiquing airports is a relative thing. It's all about expectations, which vary widely from country to country, city to city. I wouldn't be so down on Dakar if I hadn't assumed it would be better. Senegal is a developing country, yes, but plenty of nations just as poor, or more so, have built reasonably pleasant facilities. Dakar is one of Africa's largest and most important cities, and a port of call for several prestigious airlines (whatever that means anymore). A million and a half passengers pass through here every year. For the sake of national pride, it should convey a little dignity instead of sullying the memory of Léopold Sédar Senghor, who died in 2001. A poet, philosopher and leader of African independence, he was also the country's first president.

But who am I to judge? As someone who is happy to hang out in airports even when he doesn't have to, my opinions are grossly, and maybe perversely, biased. Regulars to this column already know of my fondness for New York's JFK, perennial loser in just about every travelers poll ever taken, but a place I often romanticize for its history, tarnished glamour and cornucopia of exotic liveries. I'm strange that way. (I have a thing for Miami too -- a salsafied JFK, similarly loathed by travelers -- for the same reasons.)

So next time, you do the talking. Readers are hereby invited to share their opinions on what are the best, worst and weirdest airports across the globe. It's not a poll, per se, but the most colorful and pithy submissions will be published in a follow-up column to run in early June. To be considered, blurbs must be 100 words or less. Please put the airport name and, if known, its three-letter code in the subject line. Send your letters here.

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For a photo tour of the author's trip to Senegal, click here.

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