Senegal uses the same currency and speaks the same official language as Mali, and US citizens don't need visas to visit, and Dakar is only a 90-minute flight from Bamako. We felt like we were just visiting another state -- taking the weekend shuttle to New York from Washington, for instance -- not another country.
We got off to an inauspicious start, waiting out a torrential downpour (accompanied by lightning and high winds) in the airport. From the salle d’attente, we had a great view of the runway, which was struck by lightning every few minutes. The flags stood at 90-degree angles from the poles, as if they were starched and ironed. At one point the lights went out. When the torrent slowed down, relatively speaking, we were herded onto the Air Senegal plane. We sat on the tarmac for another hour or so.
I have always been somewhat anxious about flying. Over the past couple years I’ve been flying a lot more regularly, thinking about my anxiety and ways to deal with it. Two things have helped me:
- Sailing lessons. It was on the Potomac River that I learned about the physics of sailing, which are sort of like the physics of flying. Wind passing over the sail/wing (not pushing directly on it, as a non-sailor intuitively thinks) causes the lift/speed. Or something like that. Anyway, it helped me understand how flying works, which makes me trust airplanes more.
- Morbid truth. Most airline accidents happen on takeoff or landing, right? So, if you make it through takeoff you’re practically home free. This doesn’t actually relieve my anxiety, but rather concentrates it into a few sweaty, white-knuckled, heart-racing minutes. After that I can relax and enjoy my statistically-pretty-darn-safe flight. And I don’t usually get nervous on landing. Maybe coming down seems more natural than going up? Or maybe a flight passed in safety and comfort gives me confidence that it will end well, too? Or maybe the complimentary champagne and glut of free American movies distract me from thoughts of my own mortality.
Dakar is on a peninsula called Cap Vert, which is shaped sort of like a narrow inverted triangle and connected by an isthmus from the northeast corner to the mainland. The Savana hotel is on the Petite Corniche, the east side of the southern tip, facing Gorée Island. Our room at the Savana was a real hotel room, by golly, with a TV, a hair dryer, little shampoo bottles, and an American style tub*. Also, a little plastic-bag dispenser near the toilet, “For Lady.”
Later Friday morning, we woke up just in time for breakfast by the pool. After the coffee brought out of our collective stupor, we registered, and voiced awe at, the hugeness of said pool. It was Olympic-size, we thought, although we couldn’t be sure; neither of us had ever seen an Olympic-size pool. It was so dauntingly large that we -- dabblers and splashers, not lap-swimmers -- never dipped so much as a toe in it the whole time we were there. We didn't dare disturb its perfect, glassy, turquoise, huge surface with our clumsy and undeserving (and decidedly un-Olympian) limbs.
*Malian style showers are basically a shower head over a drain in the corner of the room. When one showers, the entire bathroom gets soaked. We made several vain attempts to hang a curtain in ours, but now we just squeegee the room after every shower.
