Around Ouagadougou

We are at the beginning of our third full day in Ouagadougou, the capital city. Thus far most of our time has been spent getting acclimated to the area and gaining a better understanding of the community and culture. On Tuesday afternoon we had lunch with Joseph, our Navs host, to discuss the plans for our three weeks in Burkina Faso. The team came away from the meeting much more excited as were able to come up with a better understanding as to how our time will be spent here serving the Burkinabe. We leave on Friday, July 17th to help at the youth bible camp outside of Ouagadougou. There will be 70 students at the camp. The main speaker for the camp recently arrived from Nairobi. We are still working on figuring out the roles which we will be playing in the camp. We have been requested to provide sessions with instruction on skills that we have. We are working the camp until the 24th at which time we’ll return to Oaugadougou. After the camp we will spend our time with a variety of tasks including helping Joseph in getting a school in operating condition, possibly planting some trees, visiting nearby orphanages, helping at a Navigators medical clinic, and possibly meeting with some of the local students.


Yesterday was a somewhat classic “Africa day” where things did not go quite as planned. The initial plan had us getting picked up to go to a garden/park at 8:30 AM. That did not happen until after 10:15 AM. We needed to split into two groups to be shuttled in the car. As the first group was traveling to the park the car was pulled over randomly by the police. All of the necessary paperwork was not present in the car. This resulted in Joseph having to bring the necessary paperwork before the police would release us. The random traffic stop ended up taking over an hour. During this time half of the team went to the nearby restaurant to pick-up our lunch to-go. While they were waiting they got to know some of the locals, which included an invitation to a dance. Eventually the team was reunited at the park/garden. Eating lunch was not an easy task as large numbers of flies also wanted to share in the lunch with us. Once lunch was over, things settled down for our walk around the park. After the park we traveled to a nearby orphanage. They were not expecting us. Emily did do a marvelous job in speaking to the director in French and arranging a visit for 2-3 team members to spend a day at the orphanage the week after the camp. Then it was back to the SIM guest house with our travels around Ouagadougou done for the day.


Without a doubt the highlights of the trip have involved the opportunities for us to get to know many of the locals. While walking in the park yesterday three college-aged students asked us to come over to share their food and juice with us. Emily was so excited in taking pictures that it left Laura to do all of the speaking in French. This worked out for the best as Laura did an excellent job in communicating with them as she was nudged into her own element. Later, as we were walking around the park we had another conversation, this one led my Emily, with a local political official who at one time attended catholic seminary. He was excited to hear about our trip and our purpose to be in Burkina Faso. He has requested to pray with us at some point during the trip. During the last two afternoons we have gone for a walk around the local neighborhood where there is a continual series of markets and vendors selling everything imaginable. It is definitely obvious that we stick out. Yesterday we walked around in two groups of three, the day before it was a group of four. One of the street vendors said to us in French “yesterday there was four, today there is only three, where is the other”. On occasion a group of kids will come running up to us and line-up and put their hands out to us to shake each hand. There was one group of kids which continued to follow us. Ryan had so much fun in talking with the kids and getting to know them that he bought two of them a soccer ball. After we had all returned to SIM the kids showed up to give a special thank you to Ryan, Emily, and Susan, the three that were in that group.


Today will be a day filled with different experiences. The day starts at “Laongo” which is a well-known location of artists with sculptures and paintings on rocks. From there we will go to a nearby zoo to better see some of the local wildlife. The day will end with us going onto the university campus where we will be visiting a weekly Navigators bible study. This will be by far our busiest day of the trip. Late Friday morning we will be going out to the start of the youth bible camp.