Feel lucky that I wasn’t robbed or worse after arriving in the middle of the night before 4am at the airport in Dakar.  Got a ride in an unmarked taxi with two guys who took me out to the middle of nowhere in what seemed like a bad urban area.  The driver parked the car in an empty parking lot then the two men sitting in the front proceeded to yell at me.  

They were both big guys.  I had thousands of dollars worth of film equipment in the car.  This was a bad situation.

I thought to myself, “This is how these things happen.  This is how people get killed.”  I was able to persuade them to start the car again.  I got them to take me to the hotel after a 45 min. drive with the promise of payment at the end as the driver took though a tour of dangerous looking areas in the dead of night.  

The two had demanded I pay them the equivelant of $60 US dollars via threatening screams.

Like I mentioned, I had all my equipment in their car, some of it in the trunk.  The doors must have been locked from the outside.  I couldn’t get out.  

I felt like a fool who was certainly partly to blame for being in this trap.  I arrived at the airport 2 hours early and my fixer (after calling him using a borrowed cell) recommended I take a taxi.  It would have taken the fixer an hour to get to the airport.   Everything was closed at 3:45am.  I was immediantly swarmed by Senegalese outside the airport who wanted to be paid for some service whether it was changing money or a ride somewhere.  I didn’t feel safe outside the airport.    I finally ended up in a taxi with two thuggish types.

Through some miracle I convinced the two to take me to the hotel.  I lied and said I had no money on me.  They wanted to take me to an ATM.  I said I would pay from the ATM at the hotel.  They finally took me there.  Luckily for me there were two guards at the hotel who weren’t corrupt.

Around the guards I changed 20 dollars at the hotel and paid the driver and his thug 12 dollars to go away.  They were pissed but with the guards there had to accept and leave.

I am very happy to be writing this here unscathed for now.  I feel relieved to be alive and exhausted by the encounter.  

More to come later.

I am new to the world of blogging.  I have just begun to set up this page.  I leave for a month long documentary shoot in Africa on Sat. and hope to use this site to write about the experience.