Camel Ride & A Night on a Sand Dune

I just got back from a mini-vacation that was much needed. Nichole and I, along with four other twenty-somethings who live in Burkina or have lived in Burkina and were visiting, made a four hour treck to the city of Gorom-Gorom in the Sahel Desert which is apparently the desert just south of the Sahara (I didn't know there was a desert just south of the Sahara...I thought the Sahara was it...) We had an amazing time.

Before going, Nichole knew one of the four people we were going with. He is a missionary here with the Baptist Mission working out of Bobo, a city in the South. We met him at the airport one time and have kept in touch. He's come to visit several times; and we meet up in Ouaga when we are there. Nichole and Ruth went to visit him in Bobo before I got here...He is the one who set the trip up. His girlfriend was here visiting. She was living in Burkina with the Baptist Mission about four years ago in a village for two years. The other two were Peace Corps volunteers. They are the only Christians in the group of volunteers that they came with and have since become good friends because of that. They both live pretty far from us in the south somewhere.

Being able to be with peers was amazing. I didn't realize how much I missed it. We were able to talk about our experiences in Burkina and what Jesus is teaching us. One guy brought his guitar, and we were able to worship and pray and read the Word together. It was refreshing to my soul. It was beautiful and restful. And now we (and soon to be I seeing as Nichole is leaving in about a month and a half and I will be the only twenty something white person in Yako) have friends in Burkina. We exchanged phone numbers and have been texting each other some and plan to get together over Thanksgiving weekend and whenever we are both in Ouaga.

Not only did I come away with new friends and a rested and refreshed soul, I came away from Gorom with a story that very few will ever be able to tell.

We went on an overnight camel ride. It was incredible!! We got on our camels around 830 in the morning and started our ride into the desert. We were in the middle of nowhere, and it was beautiful in a barren desolate way. I'm not sure if it makes sense. Maybe it's just something that you have to see....It's quiet and the sky is cloudless and blue and the trees are sparse and the grass is tall and golden and waves in the dry wind.

My camel, who I named Mel until later when I named him Rough Rider, was in fact a ROUGH ride. I don't think he knew how to run. Or walk really. It was soooooo bumpy and I was leaning to the side and he tripped a lot and I thought I was going to fall off so many times. Everyone else was like "yeah, its pretty bumpy and I'm leaning too" but no one seemed as concerned about it as me...Eventually one of the guys offered to switch camels when we stopped for lunch. We stopped about 5 km from where we were going to spend the night. We stopped and ate lunch and our guides filled up their water bottles at a well. We can't drink well water. There wasn't a pump nearby (water we can drink)...the pump was 5 km away...next to the place we were going to be sleeping. We had all only brought one bottle of water and this was nearing empty for all of us. We were in the desert. It was hot. We ate lunch and tried to rest a little bit but finally decided we needed to get going or we were all going to die of thirst. Our guides got up and saddled our camels again. They took us to water. I was on a different camel this time, and I could immediately tell a difference. The guy who took my camel could tell there was something not right with him (so that made me feel better. It wasn't just me!!) We traversed the desert and came to a small village with a pump with about fifteen children standing around. They were so excited to see us, and we were so excited to see the pump!!! That water was so sweet!!! I now have a little bit of an idea of what the Bible talks about when it talks about Jesus being living water and thirsting after Him and those kind of things. We were really dehydrated and that water was amazing. It revived us all. We walked a few more meters and came to a sand dune. We went up the sand dune with our camels and had some mats laid out for us. This is where we slept. On the top of a sand dune. No tents...just the stars. It was beautiful.... and freezing cold. Although we realized later that it was probably in the seventies...But when you are used to temperatures over a hundred everyday, temperatures in the seventies are pretty cold. We doubled up sheets that we had brought and Nichole and I slept as close together as we possible could. One of the camels slept about ten or fifteen yards from us. That was a little scary. We both were wondering what would happen if the camel came over and stepped on our heads...hahaha it's kind of morbid I know. But its what we were thinking. Before sleeping though we had a great conversation about Jesus and Galatians and Proverbs; and we had a great time of prayer. There was a cook along with us and he made us African style spaghetti with a chicken. Here in Burkina people eat with their hands, and they all eat from the same bowl. Plates and spoons are saved for special occasions. So we were given a huge bowl of spaghetti and a bowl of water (no soap!) to wash our hands. We circled up and dug in with our right hands (left hands aren't allowed!!) There was such a sense of community and intimacy as we ate by flashlight with our hands out of the same bowl. We had all eaten with our hands and out of the same bowl as Africans before but never before with all white people whom we had just prayed and shared our hearts with. It was beautiful. We slept well and watched the sunrise in the morning. We got back on our camels and headed back to Gorom. The ride back was so much better than the ride there because of the camel exchange. We were all hurting pretty badly but even still I was much more comfortable, and this time it was everyone else who was complaining about the bumpiness of the ride.

When we got back to Gorom it was time to head for home...and it was sad. None of us were really ready for our trip to be over.

On a side note, I would just like to say that my French has begun to mingle with my English; and we here often find ourselves saying things like "how do we say that in English?" Or we throw French words into our English sentences. We speak a kind of Franglais (French-English) with one another and it's pretty fun. And weird that it's sometimes hard to speak my own language sometimes...I'm saying this because its funny and because if you read words in my blogs that aren't normally used in English or I use a phrase that no one ever says it's because I've just translated the French into English because I don't remember how we say it in English...and then you can laugh at me. It's funny.

Nichole and I are here running the orphanage now...Ruth has gone home. It's been two days. So far....its ....ok. I'll write more on that later.