A free afternoon... African style

We've talked a lot, we've prayed a lot, and we've spent lots of time listening to God's voice. Now it's Saturday, and we have a free afternoon amidst the otherwise full schedule of our leadership meetings. Some people have gone into Dakar to visit a children's ministry there. Others are taking a boat trip to Gorée Island, the former slave colony where captives were held before being shipped across the Atlantic. Others, like myself have stayed back at our accommodation (that's my room on the ground floor of the first little house above) to chat and catch up with old friends, or to have a swim in the hotel's pool.

The hotel has a nice long swimming pool, with water that's warm from the African sunshine.
That almost makes up for the fact that most of the beds don't have any pillows, and some of the rooms don't have any light bulbs! Our African friends simply smile and say, "TIA" (This is Africa!) Some of the more adventurous in our group went out to drive around the nearby Pink Lake on quad bikes.

Later, some others of us also set out on an adventure. A guide from the hotel,took us out in an open Land Rover, like the one you see here, next to the camels. First we went to the Lac Rose; the lake is pink because of the algae in it and is one of the richest sources for salt production in this part of the world. In fact, the salt concentration is great than that of the Dead Sea in Israel, which means that you'll float on the surface, even if you try to dive to the bottom.

Next, the Land Rover headed off on a roller coaster ride over the sand dunes; surrounded only by sand, it felt like heading out into the Sahara Desert.... until suddenly we came to the top of a dune where we could see the Pink Lake on one side and the rolling waves of the Atlantic Ocean on the other. As we headed back to the hotel, we stopped to speak with a man who was making pictures out of the sand. We bought one or two, and he offered to make more for us when we bring our outreach teams to Senegal this summer. The sand pictures are a good souvenir of this part of Africa, and he surprised me by giving me a gift of a small picture showing the Lac Rose.