September 19th, 2001 - Dakar, Senegal

On a Tap flight from Lisbon, I arrive at Dakar Léopold Sédar Senghor international airport at 4h00am. The aircraft is bringing home hundreds and also plays as opening scene for quite few tourists venturing in African lands, some for the first time. Well, I am not a tourist on the plane, still I am not going home either... therefore I am an in between, brought to black Africa for work. I think everybody who has been to Africa remembers clearly the moment when the door of the plane opens: the smell. It is vehicled by the heat and the humidity of the morning directly into your nostrils and your lungs, it opens up or it constrains your breath, immediately; it's mixed with tropical various fragrances from rottening vegetation to the continent's sweat, definitely very biological. It accompanies you always anywhere, you get used to it but it impresses in your head and memories. Anytime I think of the moment, at 4 in the morning I have the smell coming up and with is all what it meant and what came with it...