Dakar is hot. Ungodly hot. The kind of heat that assaults from all angles. It radiates downward from the cloudless sky and upward from the sand at my feet. It presses in from every side, bounces off the concrete buildings, flows over the ocean in a hot wave of humid air.
At midday, no one moves. If I am home, I stay in my room. I stretch out on the bed and I will the heat to pass. If the power is on, I crank up the fan and aim it at the bed. If the power is out, I lay in a pool of sweat. Moisture beads on my arms, in my hair, and I am drenched.
The weather is also variable.
I pull myself up off the damp bed and take a cool shower. I cross the street for lunch, head from the lush confines of the villa where I live to the cool inner courtyard of the home where I eat. The space between the two is negligible, a 10-minute walk at most. But in the bright sun and fierce heat of midday, it is an impossibly long stretch. I arrive red-faced and sweating.
We eat together on the floor. On Sundays, it’s always the same: yassa, chicken stewed in an onion broth and served over rice. The madame scoops bits of rice and sauce and meat with her hand. She pulls apart the chicken and flings bits to each person seated around the metal dish. There are nine of us today. We spoon the chicken into our mouths like hungry birds.
The power is off for most of the meal, and without the fan the heat inside the living room is heavy and thick. But as we eat the last grains of rice, a breeze stirs the leaves of the mango tree in the courtyard. I look out the open back door, and I see that the blue sky is covered over with grey. The temperature drops, and in the stillness of an afternoon without electricity, we can feel the coming storm.
I say my goodbyes, and I pass through the courtyard into the narrow alleyway. The wind kicks up the sand that is everywhere here, and I squint and turn my head from the gritty blast. The people around me turn their heads, too. We are all hurrying, trying to reach some secure spot before the storm hits. The wind blows in gusts, and laundry set out to dry in the heat of the day snaps on the line. A sheep tied to a tree brays and yanks on his tether. Blades of grass ripple at his feet.
I move back across the street, my head bent against the storm. I unlock the gate to my villa and duck inside as the first drops of rain fall. The heat that has been building all day suddenly slackens, and the grey clouds overhead deliver us from the inferno.
