Tuesday, September 8, 2009

June 9th...Bamako/ Torogo

You might be thinking what happened to June 8th? Well June 8th was actually the day of the previous post...it just all blurred together and I forgot...


On June 9th we loaded up our Jeep (see picture in previous post, which is actually a picture taken the morning of June 9th) and made the 9 1/2 hour drive down to Torogo. Now 9 1/2 hours is a long time...especially when you are crammed in that jeep with no leg space and what little leg space you had was occupied by some sort of luggage. Not to mention that there is not such thing as rest stops or fast food resturants where we were. We stopped once for a roadside lunch and back woods potty break...



For the most part we drove on "paved" roads. The roads had rather large pot holes that tried to be avoided, but was most of the time unsuccessful. As we drove we would see large fields of crops with sporatic mud hut villages every so often...



We would alos see people sitting by the road waiting to sell various foods. You would just stop and everyone would run up to your window trying to get you to buy food. It was their only way of making money. The food was cheap too. You could get about 10 mangos or so for $1 American. As we were driving, all of the sudden we heard this pelting noise sounding almost like rain drops...I looked up and to my suprise saw a bunch of bug guts on the window...we had driven through a swarm of flying termits...


In the end, there were actually more on the window than showen here. Throught the trip we would go throw random stops that the rebels had made in order to get money. We, however, never paid. While at the stop for the boarder, Bill got out to convince them to let us through (which was very easy, they didn't even look at our passports). While there we tried to pay a little kid to clean the wind shield...that didn't work out, he just broght a bucket and rag...so Tanner (who is Bill and Diane's youngest son) had to do it...


While we were there, one of the rebels began talking to Diane. Later we found out that he was asking her for us to bring "air conditioning" to all of Africa...even outside the buildings. She told him that was not possible..his response "You white people can do anything!"


When we made it to the Dispensary we were all so worn out..and because of that I was becoming a little home sick in the way that I wanted my own bed...especially when I say the rooms. They were worn down and I ended up opting to sleep on an air matress on the ground as opposed to a worn down matress or water bed. It ended up being very comfortable and I ended up sleeping there at the other place as well. They also warned us about Scorpions...AHHHHH!!! That is the absolutly ONE thing that I DO NOT want to have an encounter with! The year before they had found 6 scorpions in the place we were living...hopefully they all go scared away! We had dinner at Robin's house. Robin is a Nurse Practitioner that lives at the Dispensary and runs it. She had another student, Christy, staying with her for the summer. Christy had already been there 5 weeks and had 3 weeks left to go. Tomorrow they put us right into work at the dispensary. Hopefully the language barrier won't be too big of a problem! I know absolutly NO French!

One thing that I was hoping to see were animals such as Giraffes and Elephants..I found out those are in East and South Africa...not West, I was really bummed. I also learned that you can put America in the Northern part of Africa and still have room to move around...it kinda puts things into perspective...



Here is a picture of just the West part of Africa..You can see Casablanca in Morocco, and Bamako in Mali (which by the way Mali is wayyyyy bigger than Texas can ever hope to be!). Then you can see where Cote d' Ivoire is. Where we were is about where the "Cote" is...


Here is a picture of just Cote D' Ivoire
You can see Korhogo..that is a bigger town just outside of Torogo where we were for the Dispensary. We then traveled up to Ferkessedougou (yeah try saying that 10 times fast...I can't even pronounce it the first time) We just called it Ferke..so did all the natives. While in Ferke we wanted to visit orphanages, but the orphanages are in Bouake (pronounce "Bua-que")...but that will be a later post!

Up date on the Present:

When I left Africa I expected to miss it a little. Recently, however, I have missed it oh so much! Way much more than I ever expected to. It's a little suprising but at the same time exciting! I long to go back, I'm still not sure if to the same place necessarily, but possibly. Right now, however, it is a bit depressing because I need to finish school and get experience (and learn a language) before I go anywhere...We will see where God will end up leading me and when...even at the end of this year...I have no idea what I'm going to do or where I'm going to go in May....we'll see where God takes me!

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