Currently on a layover at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport - very nice. From here work is sending me into the Third World. To a region where the Travelex agents just told me they don’t carry these particular nations’ cash because their governments are too unstable to dependably rate their currency.
Our working group is supposed to have armed Marines assigned from the Embassy escorting us, but that might only be for when we’re transiting between the cities. Otherwise, not allowed anywhere alone.
So far, so good here in West Africa. FIRST TIME TO AFRICA! For workdays confined to the very large Capitol City, it is not unstable enough to require armed escort, but for the onsite visits we’re scheduled to make out into the greater coastal region that might be a different story. Probably safer than it sounds, but nevertheless quite a chaotic area.
Our hotel property is more like a compound, charging western prices for rooms behind high walls topped with barbed wire, and heavily guarded at the gates. The amenities are of a Vegas level resort with pools, fountains, spas, sports bars, gyms, shuttles, and room service. In the most impoverished of nations it’s common for leading hotel brands (like Marriot and Hilton) to build a luxury property at the international airport (like in Delhi) or at a tourist sight (like Luxor), and as mentioned above, charge prices unaffordable to the local population for rooms that are walled off from the local population.
As our flight lands the other night, the cabin is fumigated as precaution against the regional spread of malaria and Yellow Fever. At customs I’m sent through the diplomatic line. It is midnight. Outside the terminal a large, vocal crowd waits in the thick humidity. A taxi driver takes my luggage through the crowd. He wants to know
where? I ask if he can take credit cards. He walks me to a 24-hour currency exchange where I trade out cash. At the first large intersection outside the airport, a pack of boys, ages 10 to 12, walk up to idling vehicles, hawking everything from bottled water to phone chargers to animal crackers to wild birds. They crowd my passenger window, about eight of them, once they recognize a white guy is riding shotgun. In the morning I am awoken by an exotic hornbill rapping on my room window:
