#2: [07-Mar-08]

29-May-2004 -- We are working as missionaries among the Marense people in Burkina Faso and one of the villages we visit is close to Zéguédéguin. I met Christine there on Friday morning and we set out on two P50 motos towards Bogandé. We traveled on a small bush path for a while until we came to a huge market. There we discovered a red gravel road that took us all the way to Bogandé. We arrived in this Burkina town about an hour and a half later and found it to be a pretty booming place. We sat down at a "restaurant" and had a Fanta and omelet. Some people at the restaurant asked us where we were going and it was funny because I just pointed in the direction of the confluence point. There was no name for it and I did not know how to explain a confluence point to a Burkinabé.

We left Bogandé and tried to cross a dried up barrage but found it to be impossible, so we got on the path that got us around the barrage. It took us another hour and a half to find the point. We were on a nice path going towards the point until about 3 miles (5 km) from it. We had to leave the bush path and just blaze through until we made it to the point. We had fun motoing through millet fields, dodging rocks and thorn bushes, and finding ways around marked-off areas for farming. After a bumpy ride and making our own path, we arrived at 13N 0.

I noticed there were some compounds in sight from the point. The landscape was different from the area where we had just traveled. The ground was made up of packed sand and there was a small hill close by. The sun was going down and the sky was getting dark. We decided to take out our mats and sleep on the point, planning to take pictures in the morning.

We awoke to lots of wind and sand around 3 a.m. The entire sky was being illuminated with lightning. We managed to get our stuff together and ride over to a compound in the dark. Some very nice Africans took us in and let us sleep in their house while it was raining. We went back over to the point around 6 a.m. to take pictures and the sky was beautiful, as the sun was coming up but there were still lots of clouds.

Due to the rain, our journey back home from the point was very interesting. The man who let us stay at his compound, Mousa, got on his motorcycle and showed us the path back to Bogandé. At one point, we had to cross a rushing river and Mousa lost one of his shoes. We had to go through a lot of water and mud, and Christine fell off her moto once. Mousa left us when we were just a mile and a half (2.5 km) from Bogandé. As soon as he left, we came to a huge obstacle - a lake of water! We had to carry our gear across first and then walked the motos through the water, which was above our waist in some areas. After that the motos would not start, so we had to walk them for about 45 minutes to Bogandé. Once we arrived, we got the motos fixed, refueled and then headed to our home in Kaya. It took us 8 hours on Saturday and then an hour and a half Sunday morning, riding the motos, before we reached our house.