Thoughts from W. Africa

Our time in West Africa is drawing to a close — we will be home this weekend.

I thought I’d share some photos from a large city here in West Africa, near the capital, that we visited today. Despite the fact that this is a large city, in and around it live five unreached people groups. We spent time with the only known Christian family in one of those groups. Many of the children speak only their own language, then learn French in school. But that’s not their heart language. If these people groups are going to have an opportunity to know Jesus, people are going to need to come here, work with the local church and believers here, learn their language and learn their ways — building relationships that will help them see Christ in us.

On our trip to the interior of West Africa, we had the experience of eating chicken and rice in a 95-degree restaurant while a French soap opera blared on the TV. I don’t recommend the experience.

By afternoon in the interior, the sky was no longer blue. It was a tannish-gray from all the dust in the air. I wrote to Julie today that I will be glad to get out of the dust at the end of this week, but that it will take longer to get the dust out of everything.

The second day we were in the village in the interior was cooler than the first. It only hit 105 degrees F.

For lunch on our last day in the interior, we had porcupine in peanut sauce. Then we drove about 80 miles on what they said was a road. The fact that the 80-mile trip took nearly four hours should give you an idea what kind of road it was. That night, we ate at a hunting lodge overlooking the Gambia River. We ate warthog. No, it didn’t taste like chicken.

The three of us — two from the NTM USA Communications team in Sanford, Florida, and a freelance photographer — were mostly on our own for one weekend in Dakar. I know very little French, but that’s a lot more than the other two. So I was the one who interpreted menus and ordered for us. Apparently my French is not as horrible as I thought — we got what I ordered. At least, not horrible by West African standards.