Saturday, July 1 - From Abidjan to Dabakala

The drive from Abidjan on the coast to Dabakala, inland and where the workshop will be held, is a 6- or 7-hour drive if you do it in your own vehicle. The road is paved the entire way, and if it were all in good repair, it would take even less time than that. Matthieu and I traveled by bus, however, and with all of the stops to pick up and drop off passengers along the way, it took us eight and a half hours.

It all started for me this morning at 4:00 AM, when my alarm woke me up. I had slept well, but my body protested the early start, wanting to make up for the deficit incurred during that night I hadn’t slept much on the plane while flying to Addis Ababa. But I couldn’t afford the luxury of more sleep this morning; departure was set for 6:30, and I had to repack all of my things. (For those of you who have never had to learn from the experience of luggage being lost, allow me to digress into an explanation of why I had to repack.)

For my trip from the US to Africa, I had a luggage allowance of two checked bags, one carry-on bag, and one “personal item”. My carry-on bag is a roller bag that pushes the limits of the allowable dimensions for a carry-on. My personal item is my laptop in its bag, both of which are very small. To minimize the inconvenience I’d experience if one of my bags were to go missing, I distributed my clothing between the two checked bags and the roller bag, rather than packing all of my shirts, for example, in a single suitcase, which would make more sense to me organizationally. For the bus trip, I didn’t have to worry about my luggage being lost, so I preferred to repack everything in a more sensible way. And indeed, as I was in the process of doing that this morning, I realized that everything would fit into two of the three bags, so I guess I could have left one of them behind when I was packing for this trip.

As it turned out, my morning routine, including a breakfast of French-style bread with butter and raspberry jam, plus the repacking exercise, kept me busy until close to 6:30. But I was ready by the appointed time and carried my two suitcases (the third one having been packed inside the largest one), my computer bag, along with my bread and water rations for the trip, down to the front porch, where I waited while Matthieu went off to hire a taxi to take us to the bus station.

On our way there, it began to rain, and by the time we got to the bus station, it was raining heavily. (Fortunately, I had correctly calculated that this time of year was rainy season in this part of the world, so I had a compact umbrella in my computer bag. That came in very handy to get me to the waiting room in a dryer-than-I-otherwise-would-have-been condition and served to shelter our bags from the rain while they were stacked in a more exposed location until the rain let up a bit so they could be loaded into one of the bus’s cargo bays.

Our departure was significantly delayed by the rain, as the bus company employees preferred not to take everyone’s belongings to the bus in the pouring rain. Normally, departure would have been around 7:00 or 7:15. Instead, it was past 8:15 when we finally pulled out of the bus depot. Water was running swift and fairly deep in many locations because of the amount of rain that had fallen. But when Matthieu called someone in Dabakala to see what the weather was like there, they reported sunshine. So we were not surprised to see the rain taper off and give way to sun as we drove northward.

Leaving the bus station in Abidjan

The bus we rode in from Abidjan to Dabakala

Climate report: It is very much the rainy season here, and we are in the tropics. As a result, everything is very green, and the air is very humid. My clothes are sticking to me as I write this. I am expecting to have to wash my clothes frequently because I will be doing a lot of sweating.

A view of the rainy season greenery

When was the last time you saw names like these at an intersection?

Accommodations: I am pleased with the accommodations that Matthieu and his team have arranged for me for the month I’ll be here. I am being put up in the Catholic church’s guesthouse, which provides me with a room containing a double bed, a closet, a table & chair, and my own private bathroom. Both rooms have a tile floor, which minimizes the dirt under foot and makes cleaning the floor as easy as it gets. I did bring my own pillow with me, because I have experience with African pillows and they do not normally work very well for me. I add mine to what I find where I go, and that usually works well for me, elevating my head enough for me to breathe easily while sleeping.

The guest house where I'm staying

My room has electricity, and there is an air conditioner, but I don’t expect to need to use it, as temperatures cool down nicely at night, which should allow for good sleeping. There is a shower head, a sink, and a toilet in the bathroom, but there is no water service at the moment. Apparently this is a fairly common occurrence, so I’ll just have to deal with it. There are two buckets of water sitting there that I can use when the city water is off then refill after it comes back on.

Food: I got my first taste of “attieke” last evening. Apparently, I’m likely to see that on the table quite frequently while I’m here. I was a bit concerned that I might not like it when I was told that it’s similar to couscous but with a bit of something fermented added. I tend not to like African foods that have that “fermented” feature. But what I had last evening was very good and my taste buds did not send any negative messages to my brain, so that was encouraging. I did tell my hosts, in response to their question about what things I do not eat, that it would be wonderful if they would avoid using red palm oil in their preparation of the food they’d like me to eat, as my entire digestive system has unanimously voted that substance repulsive, and it’s hard work overriding the “reject” messages my GI tract sends out.

So thanks to each one of you who’ve been praying me safely over here and as you entreated our Father to provide me with acceptable arrangements for lodging and meals while I’m here. There may be some things that take me out of my comfort zone a bit, but I feel very positive about being able to cope here. Continue to pray, but include thanksgiving for prayers already answered as you do.

I did come down with a cold within 24 hours of arriving in Africa, probably one that was lurking in my body, waiting for a moment when my defenses were weakened—and that moment came after being sleep-deprived during my long flights. I brought all of the remedies that I normally use to minimize the symptoms I have to deal with while a cold runs its course; pray that they will be effective this time as they have been in the past.