Safe and Sound

For a change, our travel to Senegal was smooth and uneventful.  The odds were improved because we were not transporting a dozen bags packed with medical goods.  The Wisconsin contingent of four, Tony, Tania, Lynea, and Troy, met us at O’Hare airport.  Joanne will be arriving in Dakar on Monday morning.  We left Chicago at 3PM Saturday with the temperature around 20 degrees, and arrived in Dakar at 9AM local time (3AM Chicago time) Sunday with the temperature at 70 degrees.

Even without the computer display showing our position via GPS, I could sense our approach to Dakar by an increasing haze as we neared to coast.  Dust and smoke combined to dull the bright blue ocean and sky above.  Stepping out of the plane, I realized that Dakar has a distinctive odor combining – cooking fires, burning rubbish, and Diesel exhaust.

The Gibsons and Christine greeted us outside of the airport and we piled into the mission bus for the ten-minute drive to the church neighborhood.  We drove directly to the church service, which combined two and one-half hours of singing, liturgy and preaching.  I will admit that I began to nod as the sermon passed 45 minutes.  Dr. Bashir and several others of our friends were at the service.  The new church space is both larger and more open than the prior location and presents a better worship experience.  The congregation was welcoming and spirited in worship.  After the service, we walked the two blocks to the guest house accommodations and had lunch.  Thereafter, downtime allowed some rest.

In the late afternoon, a dozen of Carol’s past community health worker students joined her to debrief on their experiences in the past two years.  They went around the table and recounted successes and issues they had experienced in their past two years of work.  The meeting went on for four hours and then we had dinner together.  Carol told them that she was excited by their stories.  Much of the expressed concern was about sustaining the program through some sort of token contributions from patients and others to defray the cost of simple medications.

We slept like logs last night.  I have found that the church's internet access is very dicey - so I may not be making as frequent posts as I would like.

Tom