November 2, 2007, Flight from SFO to JFK
I finally have a moment to sit and just write. What a wonderful feeling!
The travel has its own set of anxieties. I’m in a race of physical progress across the continent versus my ability to reserve flights, find accommodation, and obtain visas, all of which is a constantly shifting scenario that regularly confounds me.
The latest incident: I confirmed my intercontinental flight to Dakar multiple times, but apparently the airport may be closing in Dakar, hopefully not until after I land there. Instead of finding out from United or South African Airlines, the transcontinental and intercontinental airlines I chose for these segments, I discovered this problem while on the phone trying to keep a reservation to fly out of Dakar on Air Senegal. Getting on the phone with Air Senegal is an amazing trick. They are open either late at night or early in the morning during the Pacific time we have at my home in San Francisco. When I call out of business hours, the line is simply busy. When I call during business hours, their phone answers with a recording and accompanying ditty in French about the wonders of Air Senegal, not many of which I can pretend to have experienced. About once out of every twenty calls, the Air Senegal operator comes on the line before the phone system arbitrarily hangs up on me leaving a long quiet static followed by a loud and insistent beeping, to which I hang up and try again. When I do get through on the phone, the first minute is a panicked negotiation to ensure that we are actually on the phone and speaking with each other. I’ve lubricated my rusty French through repeated forays into air reservation territory. The surprise at 2am this morning was that the flight I wanted from Dakar to Bamako on November 6th was canceled, well they didn’t exactly say it was canceled, just that the Dakar airport would be closed. How about the 7th? Flight full. Well, actually no, airport still closed. And the 5th? Nope, closed. And the 8th? Yes, we will switch your reservation to October 8. And who knows? O, and by the way, you can’t pay for the reservation over the phone. By credit card? No, you must pay in person at an Air Senegal office. Is there one at the airport in Dakar? Yes. Will it be open when my flight is scheduled to arrive early in the morning? Yes, it’s open 24 hours. All this in French with a good dose of static in the background, plus a distracting echo at least on my end of the line. Perhaps I will still have a reservation when I get to the Air Senegal office at Dakar airport, that is, if the airport is still open so we can fly there. The Air Senegal jingle still rattles around in my head.
My itinerary is tight-packed, so an extra two days in Dakar, while potentially productive and fun, will wreak havoc on the schedule further down the line. I may have to cut back on early Ghana aka Wagadu empire sites in Mauritania for example.
All in all, I tell myself I am doing well. I only broke down once so far to bring in a travel agency: Air Treks, who specialize in multi-destination world travel. And that only when I couldn’t get Air Senegal to issue me a ticket for one set of flights or even to make a reservation for another set of flights. O yes, the only place I want to fly where a single non-stop flight is available is from Dakar to Bamako. All the rest are multiple segments to get from one place to another, even if the crow’s eye distance is shorter than the route from Dakar to Bamako. And of course those multi-segment flights can only combine when airlines have fare rules permitting one to book them that way. And the fares on some of these shorter flights are quite high. Why fly? I simply can’t cover the distance in the amount I have alloted for this travel without resorting to many flights. Even as is, I will be traveling overland a lot, sometimes under difficult conditions probably similar to what I experienced between Ethiopia and Sudan or in the middle of the Sudanese desert.
Now, off to write some historical fiction. Think positive: the next blog entry will come from west african soil!