Laongo and Zinaire

On our last full-day prior to the camp we chose to take some more time to learn and understand the local area and culture. The day started with a trip to Laongo, which is about an hour drive away. Laongo is a sculpture garden in granite. Every two years artists come from around the world and spend a month creating sculptures in the granite. We decided to pay the extra money for the tour guide. It was about $12 for everybody. It turned out to be a very good decision as the tour guide provided us far more insight than we ever would have gotten on our own. His English was good enough to get through the tour, although at times Emily and Laura helped him out. He also provided us some riddles along the way to keep us entertained. At the end of the tour we also found out that our tour guide is the brother of one of our hosts for the day, which Joseph arranged.

Next on the schedule was a visit to Zinaire, which is basically a zoo with African wildlife. We were done with Laongo by about 12:30, but it was a long process to get to Zinaire. We initially drove to a village where we met up with a local community official. He took us to a nearby restaurant for lunch. It was our first real experience with native food. It appears very customary to have time for rest between around 1:30 PM and 3:00 PM each day. Once we were done with lunch we were in that rest period. We were brought to a small farm where we could sit underneath some trees. Included in that time was a tour of the farm and a description of what was being grown. Eventually we reached 3:00 PM, when we were able to leave. Then it was onto a hotel to pay for the entrance into Zinaire. As is seemingly customary for Africa, it took some time. Eventually we got to Zinaire around 4:30. The time at the zoo was spectacular. We were able to see nearly all of the African animals that you’d expect to see, including gazelles, lions, tigers, elephants, hyenas, and giraffes. It was a great visit and a wonderful opportunity to see the local wildlife.

From Zinaire we went back into Ouagadougou where we headed straight to Joseph’s house. He then took us to a nearby university where we met up with a bible study. I would describe the bible study as typical of what you’d expect with a freshman study in the United States. After the early initial introductions some time was spent in getting to know the students. One of our questions for them was to share with us their favorite verse and why. This was a great ice-breaker question and valuable in us getting to know them. The bible study was concluded with a teaching by the speaker for the youth bible camp.

Because we were running late from Zinaire we had missed dinner. That was taken care of by Joseph at his house. In the end we did not get back to SIM (our residence) until close to midnight. This was quite late considering we had laundry to do as well as a 9:00 AM departure for the camp. While the clothes were being washed we had our daily team meeting to check-in with where everybody was at. On this day we had some definite conflict amongst team members as to the vision and purpose of the trip. By the end of the night, things were discussed and out in the open, but no real resolution as to how we were to proceed. It resulted in the end of our last day prior to the camp being very tension filled.