Backpacking Kedougou: Part 2

Walking to the village after the bus dropped us off

We had made friends with a Peace Corps volunteer who lives in a village 30km east of Kedougou and the plan was to spend one of our last nights at her place. Though we found a minibus right away that was heading the right direction, East, we ended up waiting about an hour and a half for it to finish filling up beyond its capacity so that we could leave. This wait was possibly one of the lowest points of the trip as I legitimately felt ripped off for having to pay extra (a whole dollar!!) for my bag to get tied on the roofrack, I was low on energy (after walking across town to discover that Lonely Planet had misled us into false hope of finding somewhere with froyo), my body was sweating from every pore, and I was crammed in next to other hot bodies who were also low on energy. I felt better, however, as we were roll-started out of the lot we had been parked in and the car came shudderingly to life. When we reached the right village, the driver forgot to stop, and we ended up walking 2km back into town watching the sun set over Africa-- a beautiful sight. We asked around the village until we found our friend's hut and met her family. That night we got to listen as one of her friends shared the story of the village founder while star gazing at some of the most amazingly bright stars I have seen in years. The 3 of us girls slept on her bed (built for 1 person), our friend took her hammock, and Anthony (the French couch-surfer was staying with her for a few days) and Mike were on a small pad on the hut floor. It was basically a sauna in there, and I didn't think I would get any sleep because of the heat and the inability to move without disturbing another sweaty body. 

Our friend's village

The overnight bus we took back from Kedougou the next day was an adventure from the start. Within the first hour we were stopped, and by the second stop (about an hour and a half into the trip) every person but maybe 3 got off the bus and started praying towards Mecca. I came to find out that these frequent stops were not, in fact, because of small bladders but were the result of engine trouble. We ended up stopping a total of 7 times in the 7 hours it took us to drive a stretch that should have taken us about 4 hours. The driver McGyvered up a fix to the slit in some part of the cooling system, but there was just too much to fix. Once when we were stopped for an hour, a local drunk approached me and my two girl friends and started to proclaim his great love and serenade us with one line from a song about "1963." He provided great entertainment for everyone waiting on the bus. Knowing the tendency for buses to break down, I'm glad we were on the overnight bus. It was much better being broken down at 11pm than it would have been at noonday (much less sun at midnight)! We switched buses in one town and our trip got significantly less interesting but more restful for the remaining 9ish hours of the trip. 

God knows how to challenge me. He knows when I am ready to learn a new sort of lesson in faith and when I am becoming too comfortable. This time round the challenge was not through physical circumstances, the times when we didn't know where our next water or food would come from, but rather in relationships and continuing the process of learning to love. Discovering more about myself and what I believe. Finding refuge in Him when I feel alone on certain issues. He knows how we are formed-- He remembers that we are dust. And He never leaves us on our own. Jàmm rekk, Alxamdulilaa ("Peace only, praise be to God").