Unexpected challenges!

Greeted at the Dakar Senegal airport by Paul Gomez (my Gambian 'son'), we learned of an unexpected challenge to our travel across the border into The Gambia.  Unkown to any of our Gambian friends, Sunday March 22 was designated for National Elections in Senegal.  How does this affect us...?  It meant that NO public transport was operating (except for the few taxis at the airport, the city was closed for elections), and that there was no bus or taxis driving to The Gambia because the citizens of Senegal were required to stay in Senegal.  After 2 hours of deliberation with the taxi drivers that wanted to charge $200 for a ride to the border, God provided one very sweet driver who offered to drive us to 3 different places in Dakar to see for ourselves regarding the reality, and he only charged us for transport to one place.  After driving past 2 completely dark bus depot's (not even a mouse was stirring), we came to a taxi park with hundreds of cars and vans (the time is now 3am), all dark and deserted except for a very small fire with 5 people surrounding it.  As soon as we drove up, 3 of them started to cheer.  They were also wanting to go to the border, but needed to wait for the car to fill up... we were the answer to their prayers!  The fare to the border...? $50!!  

Enduring 6 hours of a very cramped, bumpy, carbon monoxide filled ride... we arrived at The Gambia border.  Checking out of Senegal was easy... it should have been so easy getting into The Gambia... never had any problems in the past... as Nathan says "never count it done until the 'fat lady sings'!"  Unkown to us, South African's are required to pass a police clearance before approval for a Visa into The Gambia.  The time is now 9am on a Sunday morning, the border patrol has no credit for his phone... Paul's phone battery is dead, my battery has one bar of charge.  I give Paul $$ to buy credit and put his SIM card into my phone, and we all pray that the charge will last for us to reach someone in authority that can allow Nathan clearance into The Gambia.  After 2 hours of various phone calls, the proper person was reached, and gave permission for me to have a 24 hour Visa, and Nathan a 24 hour pass into the country.  But the Border Patrol was required to keep Nathan's Visa and meet us on Monday at Immigration headquarters.  With God's favor, we were allowed to then continue.  By 3pm, 24 hours after arriving at the Cape Town airport, we had finally arrived at the YFC office, greeted by Sylvester and some food, we crashed under a mosquito net until morning!

Monday presented more unexpected challenges.  Meeting at Immigration Headquarters, the border patrol was there as promised with Nathan's passport.  But a new law had been implemented just in the last month because of a missionary that was posting letters and information on the internet displaying The Gambia and it's president in a very negative light.  This missionary is still in jail here.  The new law requires the inviting agency to meet missionaries at the border and to 'accept responsibility' for the actions of the missionary.  Well, in our case, Sylvester was with us at Immigration, so that challenge taken care of.  But... the poor border patrol had not stamped Nathan's passport with the border stamp... he only brought it with him, which would not have been a problem except that he had stamped my passport the previous day.  We could not be traveling together and have different border stamps.  The solution... the border patrol had to travel back to his border and stamp Nathan's passport, and then return to headquarters (2 ferry rides and 1 hour by car).  But Immigration agreed that once this was done, the passport could be given to Sylvester later in the day, and we could leave.  God is good to have put Nathan's passport back into our hands the next day.  "The fat lady has sung!"

More pictures and adventure later... the internet has been extremely challenging... 

Living the adventure of service to our King!

Julianna & Nathan

:)