That wonderful smell of hot, damp earth, from that of the Tropical Greenhouse at Kew

From Trying to Please by John Julius Norwich.  Page 244.

My overriding impression of that journey was how much more stylishly the French ran their overseas empire than we did. I flew from Marseille at midnight, and arrived at Niamey around four in the morning, emerging from the plane into an atmosphere indistinguishable, both in temperature and in that wonderful smell of hot, damp earth, from that of the Tropical Greenhouse at Kew. It was pitch dark as we drove to the hotel, where I fell into bed—only to wake up four hours later to a loud and regular slapping noise. Mystified, I drew open the curtains and gazed out on to a scene I shall never forget. There below me was a huge bend in the Niger, on both banks of which stood hundreds of women, all dressed in dazzlingly brilliant colors, apparently trying to smash the rocks with their laundry. “Slap, slap, slap” they went against the stone; when they had finished with a given item they spread it out on the ground behind them before taking up the next. Many of these items were equally dazzling long strips of cloth, presumably intended for wrapping round and round the body in the African fashion; the entire riverbank had been transformed into an enormous rainbow. That was surprise number one. Surprise number two followed soon after when I went down to breakfast. There, instead of an egg, I was given a superb truite aux amandes, as good as anything I could have got in Paris—the fish fresh as a daisy, both of us having arrived on the same plane.

The three or four days I spent in French West Africa—the countries may already have been technically independent, but all the signs were in French and there seemed to be French people, both military and civilian, everywhere—confirmed this first impression. The hotels were simple but spotless, the food invariably superb, the bars stocked with Pernod and Dubonnet, the Sancerre deliciously cold. The countryside through which I drove was that of ageless Africa, but the towns radiated chic: Afro-chic perhaps, but all the better for that. How different was the Nigerian frontier, staffed as I remember by a single giantess in uniform looking like an enormous khaki dice, her two breast pockets projecting horizontally in front of her, sitting at a rickety wooden table ringed like a coat of mail by the circular stains of a thousand outsized beer tankards, from one of which she was thoughtfully swigging as she did the British football pools.