As the Airplane banked for the last time to line up w/ the runway, in Banjul (the Gambia), I suddenly felt kind of like I was coming home. As I peered past Jeremy trying to look out his window, the country side I had once called home start to come up at us, there were the Palm trees and the a couple of Cashew groves, little citrus trees that looked more like bushes from were I sat. I noticed the looks on the faces of my team were those of people coming into a new place for the first time. Looking to see what this new Continent we were going to be calling home looked like, scanning memories to find anything that might be similar. Then with a graceful bump we touched down, the jet rumbled down the final runway, and finally slowed and taxied up to the small terminal. We went through the bustle of every one trying to grab their bags off of one little belt... and then all the airport people swarming trying to 'help' us get through the airport (for a tip of course!), and finally we stepped through the door and found Beryl and Gary, two of EMM's missionaries in West Africa, waiting for us. The cool African night air was in the low 70s as we made our way to the car, after 20 hours of travel we were ready for a good night's Sleep.
Now that we have settled in a little bit here in Guinea-Bissau we've started our Kiriol lessons and have begun to start to learn people's names, and build friendships. The simplicity of life has thus far been a smooth transition for us. Its been reassuring to see the villagers share our dislike for snakes wile we have not seen any living snakes, 3 weeks ago the compound our team lives in killed either a black Mamba or a spitting cobra, and just this week as they were harvesting grain behind the compound they found a 4 foot puf-adder, so every snake we know of being seen around here have been killed but we still need to be careful at night to keep an eye out for any snakes that may be along the path.
One last story, before I go study for my Kiriol class. For a luxury item I decided to pack my unicycle, now I can't ride it all that well but I can get a good ways before I lose my balance, so yesterday I took it out and showed a few people how to ride it and then they began to want to try. Oh the laughter and funny comments that ensued, some people were actually scared of it, some wanted to try, and then found out it wasn't as easy as it looked, and more bursts of laughter, it was definitely one of the funniest things that I've been involved in since we have been here!
This is Jordan Ritz for the GB team signing off.
P.S. Our Email situation is kind of Up in the air at the moment, For now our internet access is extremely limited and so wile our team updates should be able to be mailed weekly, we may not actually have internet access, so until that changes post to this blog will probably be few and far between
Now that we have settled in a little bit here in Guinea-Bissau we've started our Kiriol lessons and have begun to start to learn people's names, and build friendships. The simplicity of life has thus far been a smooth transition for us. Its been reassuring to see the villagers share our dislike for snakes wile we have not seen any living snakes, 3 weeks ago the compound our team lives in killed either a black Mamba or a spitting cobra, and just this week as they were harvesting grain behind the compound they found a 4 foot puf-adder, so every snake we know of being seen around here have been killed but we still need to be careful at night to keep an eye out for any snakes that may be along the path.
One last story, before I go study for my Kiriol class. For a luxury item I decided to pack my unicycle, now I can't ride it all that well but I can get a good ways before I lose my balance, so yesterday I took it out and showed a few people how to ride it and then they began to want to try. Oh the laughter and funny comments that ensued, some people were actually scared of it, some wanted to try, and then found out it wasn't as easy as it looked, and more bursts of laughter, it was definitely one of the funniest things that I've been involved in since we have been here!
This is Jordan Ritz for the GB team signing off.
P.S. Our Email situation is kind of Up in the air at the moment, For now our internet access is extremely limited and so wile our team updates should be able to be mailed weekly, we may not actually have internet access, so until that changes post to this blog will probably be few and far between
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