Christmas In Dakar

When you land at the Dakar Yoff International Airport in Senegal (see Wikipedia entry for some interesting facts), the plane is parked on the tarmack several hundred yards from the airport building. Just like in an old movie, you walk down a set of stairs, board a bus, and ride to the main terminal. Main terminal hee-hee - there's only one. As we stepped off the bus into the terminal, we were greeted with this little surprise:

That's correct, a Christmas tree! Heck, in a land so dreary that any type of pretty thing stands out, it's pretty common to adimire something for as long as you can. I have no idea when they take down Christmas decorations. We saw a surprising number of them here and there. Surprising because, well, isn't Christmas one of those heathen Christian holidays? Why is a "good Muslim country" celebrating Christmas - the birth of Christ?

By the way, I had to ask one of the many guards if it was okay to take a picture of it. Didn't really want to spend all my time in Senegal looking at jail bars!

Hey, for a pretty funny (sadly) story of another guys adventures in the Dakar airport, read this Salon article called Ask the Pilot. It's too true in so many ways, and pretty much right on, except that for me, it was great fun! Mr. Smith is just a big old party pooper...