Driving through Casamance, the Senegal the advisories flag

Casamance is the strip of Senegal south of Gambia, and it is the one part
of the country the government advisories single out – decades of low-level
separatist conflict have left "main roads only" warnings attached to it on
official pages. We drove across it one day in late May, and here is the
honest report: nothing happened.

We were there for a boring reason. Guinea-Bissau keeps a consulate in
Ziguinchor, and collecting the visa there is the easy way into the country.
So we came down through Gambia, stayed on the main road, picked up the
visa, and carried on south.

What we saw from the windscreen: a region clearly behind Dakar in
development. Road construction, stretch after stretch of it. Some beautiful baobab
trees. Villages, fields, ordinary traffic. At no point did
we feel threatened – not at a checkpoint, not in town, not anywhere on the
road.

What we did not see: a reason to come for its own sake. On the route we
drove, Casamance was transit – the way to a border, not a destination. The
coast has its resorts, but they were nowhere near our road, and we make no
claims about them.

Both halves of this belong together. One uneventful crossing is one data
point, and the advisories exist for reasons a windscreen does not show – we
stayed on the main road, and that is the only version of Casamance we can
speak for. But if that flagged region on the map is what is holding your
Senegal or Guinea-Bissau plan together or apart, it may help to know that
ordinary traffic crosses it every day. For one day in May, ours was part
of it.