Guinea Experience

We got to Guinea border around 6pm and someone told us that the drivers could take us to Gambia straight since we didn’t have any volunteer in Guinea, we stopped at a community after the border, spoke to a woman and we were able to get kids to attend to, getting to the park we were told we will see vehicle to Gambia, the motor park was terrible, all our expectations of seeing a modern bus with AC was dashed, all we saw was smaller cars and bus that is normally called molue in Nigeria, rekete buses, we had to beg the driver to take us to an hotel to sleep, they took us to a dunk as hotel, we had to use a map and got one zambizi hotel, it was not a comfortable hotel but the drivers were tired and ready to drop us on the road, which was about 1am, we just had to make do with the hotel, unfortunately they don’t have a restaurant, we had to go to bed hungry, we were brainstorming what to do next because flight was expensive and we were told going to Gambia by road will take 2 to 3 days that was alarming because we have done 16hrs trips before but hearing 2 days became worrisome for some people, we contacted Air Senegal, they gave us a group rate of over $2000 which was 22million in their currency but we were asked to pay cash which was about 22million, imagine that huge sum should be paid in cash and she gave us few minutes to bring the money because the flight was for 8pm, we tried all we could, we could only get 10million with the ATM , we tried access bank, our money got stuck, after a while we gave up because of the network issue we cannot ask some team members to go ahead, how are we going to locate them because they were already at the airport waiting for their tickets, on our way we saw an Emirates office, were we met a young man Mr Daye who understood English, we were so happy and we explained our plight to him, he now told us that the next flight is on Thursday and he his not sure if there will space that can take 11 people, same thing with other local flights, one of our Hope dealer client offer to get everyone a ticket which was about N3.3million, we had to tell him not to worry, our only option was the bus which Mr Daye helped us arrange for 12million le, we proceeded at about 9pm same day on Tuesday around 5am the driver parked for everyone to sleep and rest, we proceeded after an hour and got to Mamou community to fix the car, we also brush our teeth, had tea as breakfast and proceeded.

At this point, we still had 17hrs ahead meaning no bathing for almost two days. After an hour trip, the vehicle broke down again at this point we decided not to follow the driver, some Officers intervened and the car was fixed at this time it was 24hrs again, the car was fixed and we proceeded after few hours the vehicle broke down again we had to reach out to the officer and Daye we waited an hour, we finally saw a restaurant, the woman had rice but no plastic plate to put the rice, we immediately opted for the only option which was leather bags, some had spoons, some used their hands to eat, the joy at the moment was that we had relatively good meal to eat after which a good bus was brought around 10pm, we got to the border around 5am on Thursday, the road is very bad, terrible with wide animals coming out of the forest, God knew that if that bus had carried us passed that community, we would be stranded in the middle of the forest where we won’t be able to get help, we became more grateful to God that all those breakdown on the way was to prevent us getting stuck in the forest. Arriving at the border, as usual, we were asked to pay; we had to explain that we were missionaries; the officer told us to go and sleep in the car and come back in the morning, that is another sleep at the border, the first was in Ghana, Guinea made it the second country.

In the morning, we went back; GOD favored us again at the police we didn’t pay the 20,000; getting to their immigration, we were asked to pay another 20,000, but the Lord made a way, we didn’t pay; after which we saw street puff puff, we ate it, another day of no bath. We finally left the Guinea border around 9 am to continue our journey to Senegal and Gambia.

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