Traveling South

People waiting to get on the barge!

We left Dakar… and not just for a vacation 1.5 hours away, we left Dakar, crossed The Gambia aaaaaaaaaaaannnd the Gambia River and made it to the other side… we made it to Southern Senegal for the first time. We have many friends from Southern Senegal, but have never visited! We left Dakar at 4:07 in the morning, packed in Del and Arielle’s car with all our things loaded on the roof. It only took us a few hours to get to the Gambia border everyone sleeping on and off in awkward positions, Del got out of the car a few times to do different paper work and buy tickets to get across the river, and TJ went with him as to learn the ropes. When we got to the Gambia River crossing… there was a long line of trucks on the right and a long line of cars on the left. Each side of the very dusty dirt road there was people selling stuff, sugar, rice, mayo mustard… and many other things. There were other vendors selling meat sandwiches and people walking around selling cold drinks and cold water, soccer balls, and “bon-bon” cookies and candies. We pulled up behind the last car and Del thought the line and wait would be shorter seeing how we got there so much earlier than the last time they went through. He said “welp… we’ll be here most of the day” For some reason I didn’t realize we were going to be waiting like so for hours on end… so I attempted to ready my brain quick for the hurry up and wait situation we were in. And as we waited there were cars and cars flying by us going right up to where they were loading vehicles onto the barge… one word: Bribe… and we were not willing to bribe so we waited a total of 5 and a half hours to get on the barge. So some of you may be able to relate some of you not, I have a fear of the action of “squatty pottying” so… I wasn’t drinking tons of water, or drinking coffee… well I got a headache so eventually I bought some nescafe from a little vendor, and it was actually amazing… he put some of that sweetened condensed milk in it, and the water he poured in was REALLY hot which is good because I don’t know how clean that glass was!

Drinking my nescafe!

It was a pretty hot day, and there was something like a dust storm every time a car drove by us, so I did end up drinking lots and lots of water, but managed not to use the bathroom until we got to Del and Ari’s, a total of 16 hours, pretty sure that’s a record for me. I’m pretty sure I’m gonna need to get over this fear and figure out this squatty potty business, which honestly is a necessity for living in Senegal… one step at a time “petite a petite” as they say here.

TJ, the girls and I walked up to the barge at one point because we needed something to do. There were two barges, a bigger one and a smaller one, we were looking on from the side/dock area over the railing. We watched as all the cars and people came off, as I looked over to the left a bus was driving towards the barge, there was lots of luggage stacked on top of the bus and it was stacked in a way that caused the bus to heavily lean over to one side, and then we realized there was about 8 sheep also strapped to the top… I was sure the bus was going to tip over as it drove down towards the ramp and up onto the barge. It didn’t amazingly enough. Eventually we made it onto the boat after several hours of waiting, now I understand what people mean when they say you never know how long it’s gonna take!

We had a wonderful time with Del and Arielle. Poor Ari was sick, but we got the chance to just be with them out of the city, and in their new little town. It was wonderful… and for your information my squatty potty skills are getting pretty good!! 😉

It was good to just sit with no sound and listen to the Lord and what he had to say to me. It was wonderful to connect to the area with the land and with the people. God is good to confirm his decisions in our hearts and to continue guiding us!