These photos don’t do it justice. Driving by this part of town is just incredible. The hills are covered in piled up huge watermelons. And every fruit stand is packed with them. And when I say every fruitstand… in Dakar there are thousands of fruit stands. I can’t even fathom how many watermelons are in Dakar right now! Its crazy!

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I love it when cameras catch funny faces! We laughed over this one for a long time!

We put up 52 pictures of the kids eating watermelon. Mostly for the grandmas… but you are welcome to check them out. We got a lot of silly faces!!

Here is a video of Emmaus picking out seeds, slurping on his watermelon and also enjoying the music! Enjoy!

Today is our day off from class, so we decided to go to a somewhat nearby grocery store and get a few things and try out a little sandwich place, too.  Our car is getting its headlights fixed so we had to take a taxi. We found one easily and headed off. We arrived at the grocery store no problem. We went to a pretty touristy area of town and the grocery store is in a little mall. They have a dry cleaners and two Guess stores and a City Sport and a few other places.  It was nice… we did not find everything we were looking for but no worries. We then sit down at this little sandwich place and order paninis. Turns out the paninis were great except their flavor… they were curry chicken apparently… Oh well! While we are sitting there eating we notice it really starts to rain… like REALLY RAIN! We were a little bit worried since we had not expected rain at all…. We left our windows in our house wide open! I always leave our windows open since its so hot and humid. We have to have the air flow!

We sat and ate and tried to wait out the rain… but after a while we figured we should just go for it and get home. We waited at the door and tried to flag down a taxi. There was one sitting across the street and one of the mall workers flagged it over. We quickly hop in… getting soaked in the process. Normally we stand outside the taxi and discuss the price and where we are going. But this time we had no choice we hopped right in! To our surprise the driver was a woman. I have never seen or heard of a female taxi driver. Turns out she pretty much only works the touristy areas and drives people from hotels to touristy spots. But it worked out anyway. We payed about twice as we normally would… but she earned every penny!

This is where the adventures really start! We immediately noticed the roads were totally flooded every where we looked and went. The first thing we see is a HUGE truck fell off the side of the road… looked as if the road had given way on the edge and it was tilted over.  I have NO IDEA how they will get the truck out.

We continue on… we try route after route after route and every way we go we end up at a point that is not passable because of flooding. She, like most Senegalese taxi drivers, was being very creative and driving all over the place… driving over mediens and sidewalks, going down the wrong way on one way roads with huge buses driving straight for us. Not to mention, we could hardly see out the windows because of the moisture on the windows. We kept wiping them down so she could see out.

We then get to one point where we are at a stand still. We then notice in front of us a ways we see a HUGE pile of stacked bins of soda. Another huge truck had lost his back wheel. So they were unloading all of the soda that was in the truck… right onto the road. So the two lane road turned into a one lane road…. VERY normal for life in Dakar.  We continue on.

We finally get with in several blocks of our house. We knew she would not be able to get us past the market just down the road from us. So we get to the market and we said that there was no way she would be able to get us any further. So, much to her protest, we get out into the pouring rain… with kids and groceries in hand!

(The upper left hand corner of this picture is where we started walking.)

We are immediately soaked and in ankle deep waters. We call this water Caca water. Because the sewage pipes all over flow into the roads when it floods. Poor Canaan is instantly bawling… because he knows the water is dirty… we have been telling him for months not to get into the water because is its nasty! I was carrying all the groceries while Norm had Emmaus…. so Norm told me to give him the groceries and then I could carry Canaan. So now Norm has 5 bags of groceries and Emmaus, I have my bag packed with stuff and groceries and am holding Canaan who is sobbing. We trudge on! Through the water and rain! We got many looks of understanding and also looks of… wow… look… these white people are like us! They live in this too! It was  a good feeling to be locals!

(A view from our balcony)

We then get down to our building. This is the lowest part of the neighborhood! Its CHEST deep with water! We start carefully balancing ourselves around the edges of the waters so we didn’t fall in…. we would climb up on the steps of peoples homes and businesses and did our best to stay out of the water. We finally get to this point of deep waters or inching along a slopped piece of cement. We started for it… stuggling with the kids. A woman comes out screaming at us… no don’t go that way… we tried to explain we lived that way… finally we realize she wants us to go through her house to the ally way. What a sweet woman. She led us through to the ally and that way we got right next to our building. But the worst part was still to come! Our local metal worker, who works right in front of our apartment saw us and came wading across the water to help us! HOW SWEET! Thats what you get for taking the time to make friends! He took the groceries and stuck them in the little shack for their tools. Then he came and grabbed Canaan from me and let me inch along a 2 inch piece of cement. Then it was Norm’s turn… he had Emmaus and was holding on to a metal thing that holds bottles of gas. The door swung open and Norm fell into the water a little bit and got right back up.  Then we get to our building… but for some reason they have a fence along the middle of the fence (its always there… like it marks the change of property or something…) … making the steps impassable unless we go around the fence. So our friend Mali passes the kids over the fence and then shows us where to step in the water so we don’t fall! How nice of them to help us! Then we get past the fence and we are home free! We are soaked from head to toe… and a lot of  ”Caca water” all over! At least we didn’t have to get chest deep! While we were trying to get past the fence we noticed that there was a big truck in the middle of the water and there were about 15 men in there, chest deep, pushing the truck out! Incredible!

(Lots of water!!)

(This is a picture of our friend, Mali, cleaning up after a past flood)

We finally get up to our house to find water coming out our front door! Haha!

We had water in the living room, two bedrooms and the office. The clean up when smoothly and our neighbor came over to help us clean it up!

We can only laugh! This is so typical for life in Senegal! The flooding is slowly going away… we hope it will be gone by morning so we can get out if need be!

Thanks for reading about our crazy day! We hope some of you can someday come visit us and experience some of these fun adventures first hand!

Life goes on here in the flooded Parcelles Unite 14!

Here are a couple pics of what it looks like with no flooding:

This is Emmaus doing this little piggy to himself.

If you don’t know what that is…. check out this wikipedia article.  I am sure a bunch of you have already seen the video…. but if you haven’t then here you go and if you have then you get to watch it again! =) I am pretty sure my mom has watched it over 50 times! =)

Check out this sweet ride! Its our new ride! =) God has blessed us with a car. We are so excited to finally be car owners again. We were not planning on getting a car so soon. But the Lord laid it on our hearts and here we are! Its a 1997 Citroen Saxo. I called it our new lemon not because its in bad shape…. but because the brand is Citroen… which is very close to the French word for lemon, citron.

She has a few body problems, has no air conditioning, needs new cushion covers, the headlights don’t work very well and the spedometer isn’t currently working. BUT it has a new motor! She is is great working shape. Its really only the not so important things that are not working.

We really felt it was important for us to buy a car with a few special qualities:

1.Something that we could currently afford with out putting us into debt.

2. Something that did not stand out around us. (None of our friends (Senegalese friends) can afford a car… getting a nice new shiny car would really stand out…)

3. Something that we could take people places.

4. Something that we could learn how to drive with in Africa and not be afraid to scrape up!

We are loving the freedoms of having our own car! Having to flag down and discuss the price for a taxi every time we went somewhere was very tiring. No taxis have seat belts and the majority of taxis are running only by a miracle. Have no idea how some of the cars we have driven it are actually moving.

There are a bunch of places now that we are ready to discover. There is a nice fruit market near our house. But we never had the chance to go there… so we hope to go soon. We are able to quickly drive to a near by restaurant to find local foods incase of need!

Please pray for us… especially Norm, as he is learning how to drive safely in Dakar. Its crazy driving here and on top of that its a manuel car. So Norm is working on getting use to it. He is doing a great job. But it is still nerve wracking since its all so new. Pray for safety and that God would use our car for his honor and ministry!

image credit: Beatrix Meszoly

Here is a video of a match from 2008 between the two best wrestlers of that year. The action doesn’t really start until the 2 minute mark.

Yesterday we decided to mix it up a bit! =) First off we started the day off by sleeping in until the kids woke up… which as a gift from God they woke up at 8:30!!! Yippie!!!! We got up and hung around… took the clothes up to the roof to hang dry. (Praise Jesus for our new washing machine!!!!!)

We got ready to head out and first went to see Suzanne. She is the lady who cleans the house for us and cooks Senegalese lunches for us 4 days a week. She frees me up enough to take our French classes and get some studying in! Since she has been working for us she has obviously been bringing in a small income. Her husband works as well, but his job isn’t doing very well. They have two children and have been living in one room, a room smaller than our living room. Since working for us she has been able to save up some money to now be renting the room right next to them. This is a HUGE answer to prayer. So we stopped by to take a look at their new room. Very exciting. Next we walked about a hundred feet down and went to our friends house, Roger and Betty.  We went to see if Betty was going to be leaving soon to see her husband (Roger) at the clinic. He is there because he had an operation. She was there… she was just about to shower and then head off. So, we waited there about a half an hour and then we took off together to find a taxi.

Roger is at a fairly nice little clinic. We were shocked to find a nice little sanctuary area in the middle with trees and benches and that all the rooms have air conditioners. Roger was quite happy to see us. We sat and talked and prayed for about a half and hour and let him and his wife rest.

Next we left the clinic and found a taxi to take us to a grocery store called Casino. No, its not a casino for gambling. I have no idea why they picked that name. Its a pretty nice chain store. There are several in Dakar.  This one has a little restaurant right next to it called Ceasar’s. They have hamburgers and chicken. They are trying to copy Kentucky Fried Chicken… they actually claim to be one… hahaha! Its far from KFC… but it does the trick!  We had lunch there. Norm got a chicken burger, the kids ate french fries and I had a chicken wrap. They were all pretty good. Not like home…. but good enough that I wish we had one closer to our house. =)

Next we went over to the Casino and did a little shopping. We bought hot dogs, canned peas, corn, and green beans, chocolate bars for making cookies, butter, and strawberry milk for making smoothies, and a can of Pringles. We also bought a little rug for the kids that has the city on it with the roads for driving around on.  They are quite thrilled. They better be, it costed a whopping $24!

After we were done grocery shopping, we stuck all of our groceries in our back pack and my hand bag. We found a taxi waiting right outside the store and of course discussed where we were wanting to go and how much it would cost. The taxi drivers always try to get as much as possible out of us… But we know pretty much what the going rate is. This is figured out by either asking around or trying our best. Sometimes we will have up to 4 taxis drive away before we figure out what the right price really should be.

The guy didn’t exactly know where the ice cream store was, but we had a map and the intersection name. So he got us there with no problems. We hopped out… (little did we know, we accidentally left Emmaus’ lovey bear in the taxi! Luckily Grandma Tami had been thinking ahead and scoured the internet for us and had bought us about 6 of them!!!!)  Canaan was so very excited to go get ice cream. He had been asking us for days if it was the ice cream day yet. Then when he woke up Wednesday morning, the first thing out of his mouth was… LETS GO GET ICE CREAM!!! He was very happy to see all the different flavors. He quickly picked the Kit Kat flavor.  While we were all sitting there enjoying our ice cream, I spotted about 3 Talibe boys right outside of the ice cream shop looking in with those eyes that say YUM!! Then you can see the  ”but, I will never get to have some of that” look. Talibe boys are boys who basically have been given to go all around town and beg for money, this money then goes to one of the head Muslim guys. Often times if the Talibe boys do not get their quota of money for the day, they will be beaten. They wonder all around town with ripped up clothes and half the time they have no shoes. We try to have peanuts and lollipops on hand, so that we can hand them something to eat instead of money, since they don’t get any of it. When we were all done devouring our delicious ice cream we decided to buy a huge bowl of ice cream for them to split.

Canaan asked me why we were buying more ice cream. I said it was for the boys outside. He asked me why would we do that? I then said, “Because, they don’t have mommies to buy them ice cream and they never get to have any.” He was quite happy with that answer.

We walked outside with the ice cream and motioned for them to come over. They did quite happily. The three of them stood right around me looking quite jealously at the bowl of ice cream. I was trying to explain to them in French that it was for them to share, but the obviously didn’t speak French. So I handed them eat a spoon that had been in the ice cream and they INSTANTLY licked them clean. I think they were expecting me to give them each a little taste. They still just stood there staring at me. So finally I grabbed the littlest boys hands and put the bowl in his hand. They still looked at me very confused. So next I went ahead and turned them around and sent them on their way. That is when it finally clicked in their heads that the ENTIRE bowl was for them! You should have see the excitement in their eyes and their whole faces lit up. They quickly sat down and started devouring the ice cream.  A little later I noticed they had moved to a more hidden spot… they were still afraid someone was going to come and take it from them. Its amazing what $4 can do for three little boys. But whats more important it prayer. We have such a great opportunity that each time I see a Talibe boy we can pray for them. The track they are headed on now is to live their lives out devoted to Allah. I pray for them that some how, God will get a hold of their lives and they would live for Him instead.

We then hopped into another taxi and we saw a small riot just around the corner from where we were. They were a bunch of people rioting in the road with a big fire and tires with big fires in them. Its amazing how life here is not at all the same as it is at home in North America.  When at home would we see so many little boys wondering around on their own trying to find money so they wont be beaten, when do we just drive by a riot like its normal every day stuff, when do we at home see hundreds of men pour in and out of mosques bowing down to Allah. It seems to me that the need for God is so very obvious here. But the scary thing is how the need is just the same back home… but it just simply is not seen!

I really hope that today you will go about your day and pray for those around you and please also pray for those around the world who very much need God in their lives!