Arkansas to Africa: West Africa

I just got back to Nairobi yesterday after a 16-day visit to three countries in West Africa. A teammate and I left Oct. 19 and headed to Dakar, Senegal, to work on visas for a couple of countries. If you have ever been curious as to how large the continent of Africa is, the flight from Nairobi to Dakar (via Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire) had us in the air for more than eight hours. That's like flying from the States to Europe! Anyway, our time in Dakar was productive and we were granted visas to visit The Gambia and Mali.

We spent one week in and around Banjul, Gambia, visiting with the Jola people. The Gambia is a tiny, coastal West African country that runs through the middle of Senegal. The people were wonderful and so friendly and the Atlantic Ocean is just as beautiful on the African coast as it is in America.

After our week in The Gambia we headed to Bamako, Mali, to visit some friends and help them with an orientation video. It was an especially great trip for me because I got to reconnect with some friends who I met in Virginia last year. What a blessing to see how they are being used to reach the Bambara people! While there, my friend Mitch took us to a village in the bush he visits often, where we stayed overnight. The people in the village were so inviting and made us feel right at home. We had some great meals (all the men shared one large bowl of rice with peanut sauce, eating with our right hands) and enjoyed great fellowship with the people. That night, Mitch, Jerry and I stayed under a small grass straw structure (picture a manger) where we slept in sleeping bags on the ground and were watched over through the night by cows, goats, chicken, sheep...you get the idea.

We finished our visit Tuesday and left Bamako that evening flying overnight back to Nairobi. It was a great trip but I was happy to get back to Nairobi and continue trying to get settled into my new home.