Burkina Faso Team 2012

16 people, 36 bags of luggage, 3 plane rides, countless security checkS and multiple air plane meals later.....we are finally in BURKINA. We arrived late Tuesday evening around 6 O' clock, packed up our bags in 4 small cars and headed to the SIM guest house.  With most of the team having no sleep for almost 24 hours, it is now 8:54 Burkina time and most of us are headed to bed.  Thanks for all the prayers and keep checking back for updates!

Here's the team's plan for Wednesday, Thursday, & Friday of this week. Remember that 'plans change' is the rule, not the exception, in Africa. So check back daily to find out what really happened.

International School of Ouagadougou (K-12)

Wednesday, 1/4: After a good night's sleep and a relaxed breakfast provided by local missionaries (& Messiah alumni), the team will head out on various shopping expeditions, to get to know their neighborhood and prepare for their work here. This is a cross-cultural course for the students, so we'll have a lecture/discussion in the afternoon at a local nature park. Want to follow along? Our discussion book is The Hole in Our Gospel. Dinner will probably be at a local restaurant, maybe at the International School of Ouagadougou (left) with missionaries for company.




Thursday, 1/5:  Dani, Katie, Lauren, & Dr. Hare will spend the morning observing how Compassion International teaches and provides for 270 Burkinabe children in one neighborhood of Ouagadougou. The Assemblies of God church where the program is held is within walking distance of our guest house. Our visit will be especially meaningful to Katie, who sponsors one of the children there; a 7-year old boy named Gal-yam. Gal-yam's mother broke her leg last spring and couldn't afford to have it set properly by a doctor. She relied on local medicine people ('traditional medicine), and the bone healed improperly. She will now need surgery to rebreak the bone and set it correctly. We've been praying that she can find the resources and courage to have this done.
 Austin, Jeremy, Kara, Matt, and Dr. Weaver will begin their computer networking projects with Joel Gray, Director of the Missionary Institute of the Sahel. And Kevin, Jean, David, Charlie, and Dr. Fish will continue preparations for their engineering work. Another lecture, another dinner, some more rest.

Center for Advancement of the Handicapped Mahadaga

Friday, 1/6: Ten of the group heads west to the city of Banfora for the weekend, while the remaining six enjoy one more day in the capital before they head east to Mahadaga on Saturday. Sorry, Mahadaga hasn't made it to Wikipedia yet. But the village sits just about where the city limits of  Diapaga and Logobou meet.  From the hilltops we climb there, on a clear day, one can see all the way to Togo and Benin. 

Mahadaga sunset

One of the first team objectives for this trip was accomplished before most of the team even left campus. Dr. Hare rang in the New Year in Tours, France, where she picked up six new netbook computers that SIM ordered to create a new, portable computer lab for teaching technology use to local youth and adults in Ouagadougou. French computers use a different keyboard than the standard English layout. And for security reasons, French netbooks cannot be shipped out of the European Union. So it was worthwhile to extend one team member's layover by a few days, and Dr. Hare was willing to make the sacrifice :). Next step: pray that all this technology makes it safely to Burkina Faso without any problems in customs.

For our trip, we had to return to campus on New Years Eve.  After a great meal from the Phillippy's, a bunch of us headed to Swing dance and watch the Pickle drop in Dillsburg for New Years.  With a lot of down time Sunday packing (or watching Charlie, Jean, and Dave pack) we had a lot of quality time together before we make the trip across the Atlantic. Make sure to check out the video of our recent activities :)

Charlie Kimpel '12 (left),  Jean Zipagan '13 (right)

Hi! My name is Jean Zipagan. I'm a junior mechanical engineering student here at Messiah College. I've been involved with the Mobility Tricycle project within the Disability Resources Group in The Collaboratory since my freshman year. In the summer of 2010, a site team to Burkina Faso discovered excessive wear on the axles of the electric tricycles there due to various design factors. Since then, the Mobility team has been working on developing a fix to that problem. During this J-term trip, a fellow team member Charlie Kimpel and I will be implementing a temporary axle solution for the electric tricycles currently in use in Mahadaga in order to ensure our users will be able to continue to use their tricycles. Having lived in The Philippines and Cambodia, I've traveled quite a bit but have never had the opportunity to travel to Africa till now. I'm excited to finally meet and live among the people we're serving.

About me:
I am a Junior at Messiah College, studying Middle Level Education. My concentrations are Math and Social Studies. While in Burkina Faso, I will have the opportunity to teach in the orphanage, which is something I have dreamed about doing since high school. I know that this is going to be an amazing experience for me, as I get to discover what God has planned for my life :)

The team will have email and internet access throughout the trip. However, the communication infrastructure in Burkina Faso is rather unreliable. We hope to update the blog at least every other day, starting Jan. 4. But please do not be concerned if there is no update for several days or if promised email/phone communication ceases for a time. This is normal in a developing country.

Please refrain from calling the Collaboratory or Messiah College simply because of 'no news', since periods like this are to be expected. In the case of a serious problem, someone from SIM or the team will drive to a nearby town to get a message out to Tony Caito, Collaboratory Manager, and he will contact families. So no news really is good news.

The Collaboratory has sent more than 100 students to Burkina Faso over the last decade, on over 10 teams. Except for minor illnesses, all teams have been fine in the past, every day, and SIM has taken good care of us. This is what you should assume.

By January 5, we will have Burkinabe team cell phones, and your son or daughter can purchase international minutes to call home, at a cost of roughly $2/minute. You'll notice a slight time delay in the conversation; you'll speak and there is a pause before you hear a response.

Please remember that Burkina Faso is 5 hours ahead of Pennsylvania time.

Thank you so much for entrusting your son or daughter in this experience. As we travel, we pray for our families back home and ask for your prayer support as well.