We're Back... And We Missed It

We’re back! It wasn’t easy to be a whole week without Internet access. Especially since I had 50 e-mail messages to work my way through when we returned! But after the rather rough and turbulent year we’ve been through, the down time did us good.

While we were away, it seems like we missed the event of the year in Ouagadougou! The city and its environs were on the receiving end of a freak torrential downpour that dumped 15 inches of rain on the city in a matter of hours. This never happens here! It’s the heaviest rainfall in 90 years! Saw some incredible photos that a colleague, Chris Ladish, posted of the event. Wow! More pictures by Chris below.

The downside is that tons of people lost their homes. What do you expect when most homes are made of mud bricks?! And why do people build their homes of mud bricks? Because that’s all they can afford. So the people that can least afford it are the ones who have to start over. Sounds like the government is working to help provide temporary shelter in public schools and other facilities.

I don’t have all the details yet, but it seems like our personal guards’ places are okay. One just lost the wall that runs around his courtyard. On the other hand, most of the employees that work on our Centre have lost their homes. Our organization in Burkina is apparently helping provide some emergency funding to help them out. What a disaster! Let’s hope there aren’t disease outbreaks now on top of everything else!