Time In Burkina Faso

 Where I stayed was a 45 minute walk off the road, so my friend carried my suitcase on her bike.

Adiara and her youngest

Adiara's sister

So, I’m off on my own.  I left Ben and the rest of the gang in the truck at the airport Sunday afternoon.  He cried.  I cried.  Mike gave Ben a sucker.  He stopped crying and I don’t really want to analyze where that puts me on Ben’s list of favorite things!!!!

In normal African form, the trip was interesting.  We got of a bit late, but not too bad.  We fly into an airport just a bit before the landing time I had listed, so I figured we must have made up time in the air, yay us!  I’m looking around as we taxi and things are a lot greener than I expected.  I have never been to Burkina in January, but since it’s during the dry season, I had the idea everything would look dead.  No matter.  I continue reading my Kindle which was malfunctioning and really irritating me.  Every few minutes the stupid thing would freeze up and I’d have to spend about 5 minutes or getting it rebooted and find my place in my book again because it would return to the front of the book!  Notice my level of distraction here.  Add to that, announcements on airlines here are barely recognizable in any language and they are speaking a language that’s not my mother tongue.  At any rate, while reading, I thought I caught the name “Lome” which is a city in a country several over from ours.  To start with, I write it off as mishearing or possibly an announcement for where the airplane is going next.  It’s not unusual for our airlines to stop over at multiple cities.

Next time, the announcement comes on I try really hard to listen better, but I’m still getting Charlie Brown’s teacher in my head and there it was again, “Lome”.  I can’t figure out what in the world they were talking about, so I pull out all of my information.  No, it clearly says my plane will arrive in Ouaga at this time.  Crud!  Now I think back.  What if I got on the wrong plane?  I’m probably going to jail.  I know I’ll go to airline jail because I don’t have a visa for Togo.  No, no I remember well that the monitor over the lady’s head had read Ouaga.  OK.  Maybe I’m hallucinating and this is Ouaga.  I’m searching the airport for any signs on the outside that would give me a clue.  The Air Togo hangar made me worried, but I see no other evidence of where I am.  I get really desperate and decide to ask my neighbor.

I know, I know.  You figure that since I’m a missionary I’ve already lead my seat mate to Christ and gathered believers in my section to form a church plant of rows C through G.  A and B would have rounded out the alphabet but we don’t want things so big that we can’t really get to know one another, right?  …  And here’s the truth.  I’ve spoken only a couple of words to the lady and she doesn’t want to talk to me and I’m happily working on my Kindle, remember?  Whatever the reply is at this point, I’m going to look like an idiot, but here goes.  “Excuse me, isn’t this Ouaga?”  “No.”  Gee, thanks for the help!

I did eventually make it to Ouaga.  Fortunately being 2 hours late is quite acceptable here and so it all worked out fine!  My friend didn’t even comment on my tardiness.

I love the city-village life and so I had asked to spend the night at my Burkinabe friend, Agira’s house.  Those following for a while remember her as my dear friend that you’ve prayed for for ever so long.  The nasty red clay dust, Ouaga was brown by the way, really choked me up to start with.  I’m certain it has settled in parts of my lungs that aren’t supposed to be dusty, too, so I could be dealing with it for years to come.  I got to spend the night in a little clay hut, unfortunately it was square instead of round.  I slept on the concrete floor on a plastic mat.   Some of you just conjured up a kindergarten nap mat in your head and were horrified by the small level of cushioning that would have been.   I don’t want to deceive you here.  My mat had 0 cushion because it was made of tiny plastic straws woven together!!!  Now the locals are all complaining about the cold, but at that point it was only around 75 and with no wind blowing in the little hut, I was fine.  Around 4 AM it dropped to around 60 and my thin African blood was no longer tolerating that.  My arms hurt, my shoulders hurt, my back hurt and my nose was frozen.  I had reached for the only thing I could find in the night which was the towel I’d dried off with when I took my outhouse with no roof, bucket bath a few hours earlier.  I think I dozed off a couple of times, but it was a long night.  Maybe I should look into purchasing one of those kindergarten mats! 

I woke up to donkey’s braying, sheep and goats frolicking and little pigs oinking.  I don’t know how they manage to have little pigs because I never see big pigs!  All this farm life roaming around gives the village feel, but the fact that I can look over the outhouse wall and count no less than 30 huts gives the city feel.  It’s all complicated and interesting and I love it mostly because I got to spend nearly 24 hours with a dear friend I can only see once every couple of years.

We stopped to rest after lunch as is local custom and since I was super tired I dozed off right away.  Within a few moments, the feel of something climbing up my stomach awakened me.  I screamed and dove over the nearest sleeping body as sleep gave way to realization.  It seems the mice mistook me for a jungle gym.  All I can say is that I am thrilled they didn’t try that trick in the dark!!

 On a final note, I didn’t really get to share more about Christ with my friend, partly because I don’t know what more I’d share.  I’ve told her nearly every Bible story I know.  Listened along with her to 2 gospels in her language.  I’ll never give up hoping, but it didn’t happen this trip.  I was interested to hear how God is answering some of my prayers and yours for her.  She mentioned a friend she has made that believes in praying for others “like you” she says.  She also mentioned that this friend was a Muslim, but converted.  I’m interested in seeing where God is going with this one!!

My love to all,

Heather