We landed at four o'clock. The sun was high and the downpour couldn't hide the uncomfortable heat. I don't think I've ever been to an airport this small.

The baggage is removed from cargo hold and past along a makeshift conveyor belt next to us. It's passed along into an adjoining door to the one into which the passengers are being directed. A glance and a stamp and passport control was behind us.

Our bags and customs was through an alcove, hold-alls and kitbags unceremonious piled in a corner waiting to be sifted through by the hopeful upon their arrival. "Am I carrying any weapons?" It seems a simple no would suffice as, of course, why would anyone lie?

Arrangements had been made for my hotel to pick me up from the airport. Arrangements had been made, and disregarded. The airport parking lot was deserted apart from a few presumed locals approaching every recent arrival. "You need a taxi?"

His name was Cedric. His car was old. Not the type of old that comes with time and constant use, the type of old that can only be achieved by neglect and the African landscape. I sat in the front passenger seat, if only to receive the full benefits of a fan struggling with the sun. I think he washed the last time he washed the car. His smell seemed to mingle with the atmosphere; a distinctly African aroma, a mixture of disintegration and dirt.

  The taxi drifted through the throng unnoticed. Cars were a regular occurrence along this strip of the airport route. They were merely an obstacle, a thing of little interest, troubled waters to avoid. I was locked in away from it all, viewing the world through strange eyes. I was nothing to them; in the end they would become nothing to me.

The countryside rushed by in a haze of mud and tin. The poverty framed the landscape; it bled from the sores of every hillside. The villagers wondered dead-eyed and aimless through the broken concrete streets. The farmers could not grow without water, the street stalls were empty. The merchants and carpenters wares were no longer valued.

The newspapers had said its people were starving and the government was helpless to avert the drought. The government was helpless; her people were dying in her hands. The villagers wandered in the sun, flies picking at their scars, waiting for the inevitable.

We arrived at the hotel at four thirty-five. The sun was high and the downpour had only lasted a few minutes. The African heat had returned to scorch the land. The porter took my bags to the lobby as I paid the driver with a currency I cared little for. The hotel was elegant and clean... In the end they would become nothing to me.