2. Do not think that after the no-sleep flight from hell, a business breakfast, 11 a.m. meeting, 1 p.m. business lunch, ferry boat ride to a slave prison island for some hurried sightseeing, and a dinner of trail mix, you will welcome the ringing of your phone at 3:45 a.m. to get you back on another 8-hour Delta flight from Dakar to Jo’burg followed by a commuter flight to Gaborone, Botswana.
3. After returning from the slave island, you take a shower, get in your pajamas, pull out your bag of trail mix, and open the mini-bar for a drink. No you don’t because the mini-bar is locked. You call the desk and are told, “you should have asked for the key when you checked in [at 6 am] and we don’t have anyone available right now to bring it up” [at the $200/night Sofitel].
4. Air conditioning settings range from a seeming quite chilly 5° C to 30° C. It turns out that 5° in Senegal is 78° F while 30° C probably corresponds to scorch and roast.
5. Allow 2 hours for the most extensive security check, luggage search, and body invasion imaginable. Obviously, the relatives of the officials operate a well-stocked store of cosmetics, razors, nail clippers, lip balm, sun tan spray, shoes (yes!), pens, and much more.
6. Do not expect your luggage to make it from Dakar, Senegal to Gaborone, Botswana with you. If it arrives the next day, do not expect it to be delivered. When you are reunited with it when you leave Botswana, expect the lock to have been ripped off, the zipper to be damaged, and the contents pilfered. Most bizarre of all: your toothbrush will be missing and your electric razor will be run down and full of whiskers of an untold number of other people.
7. Did I say, don’t ever fly Delta?
8. Do not expect a $170/night room in the Gaborone Sun to be equal to, say, a Red Roof in the U.S. Dark: one 60-w lamp on nightstand, one 40-w shaded lamp on desk. Noisy: one through-the-wall air conditioner (bought from Red Roof Inns when they upgraded). Empty: mini-bar. Broken: telephone. No replacements: used towels and wash cloths are removed, not replaced.
9. Expect the business meetings, visit to the stock market, local transportation, and other parts of the trip planned by Larry Speidell and Axel Krohne of Ondine Asset Management to be excellent and informative. For a description of the investments aspects of the trip, click here: Frontier Market Select Fund Africa Research Trip.