Sunday, June 13, 2010

Dakar, Senegal


May 27, 2010

My third trip to Africa has begun. Saying goodbye to Maya. We hug by the mailbox, then she goes inside, I step into the van, my hand pressed against the glass and Maya watching and waving from behind the front door.

May 31, 2010

The flight to Paris was long. I watched the GPS display on the screen in the back of the seat in front of me, tracking our passage across Canada, Greenland, Iceland, England and finally France. The Charles de Gaulle airport was enormous, lots of shops and places to eat. I changed a little money for euros and got a Paris coffee cup for Maya and a bag of pasta shaped like les petits Tours Eiffel. I got something to eat--expensive French yogurt: so good.

That first flight was stressless, on time, adequate food, but cloud cover the whole way. I slept awhile in the airport--unlike most airports they actually had some seats without arm rests inbetween to foil tired souls. Better yet, there where wonderful foam seats and couches in a remote sunny corner where I could stretch out and actually doze awhile.

Although we had arrived in the morning, having left the afternoon before, the sun had never set, I guess because of the polar route, so my sidereal clock had already taken a beating and I had entered that weird timeless, dateless state of being inbetween places. Such is travel.

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