Brills in a Big World: Youth Trip to Orodara and Banfora

Over New Years, Seth and I took the youth and their families for a weekend retreat in Orodara, BF. It is a very small town in southern Burkina near the Mali border. About an hour and a half away from the town is Banfora. Banfora is a popular, also maybe the only, tourist destination in BF. It has large rock formations, known as the Domes, and a waterfall. The waterfall was huge! It is the only one in BF.

With a group of over 50 students, parents, adult leaders, and siblings, Seth had to do a lot of work on the front end. The journey was about 8 hours each way, but it seemed like forever. The road was quite bumpy, but we finally made it. The first full day, everyone just hung out, played cards and volleyball, and rested. On New Year's Eve, we all went to the waterfall and domes together. We left New Year's morning and stopped in Bobo for breakfast before arriving back in Ouaga. About 15 minutes outside of Ouaga, Kate, one of our friends/part of our caravan, needed to stop for gas so we made a pit stop. Our other friend Isaak killed his car and couldn't restart it. What happened next was amazing. I'm still in awe. He was a mechanic for the Air Force, so he knows all about that stuff. He never broke a sweat, well besides the African heat. He started Kate's truck, took out her car battery, put it in his car, started his car, took the battery out, put it back in Kate's car, and we were off. In the words of Seth, "it is like he took your heart out and you were still breathing." It was impressive. Couldn't be an African road trip without some car trouble!

Here are some pictures from our trip: