Wednesday, September 28, 2011

adventure abounds.

so a lot of things have been going on lately, and it is pretty hard to just hit them all, so first i will share with you a little adventure that some friends and i went on last weekend. we started off in lewis' van (that he bought in sierra leone to get around easier.....) driving about 4 hours north to a village right on the border of guinea. the village was actually the last stronghold that the rebels were in control of at the end of the war, so this particular village had seen quite a bit of death and and endured a lot of heartache. it was also a diamond mining village, which is what was drawing us 4 hours away from the ship. we werent interested in keeping any of their diamonds, we just really wanted to see how they actually do the mining and thought that they would maybe be willing to show us the fields where they pan for them....




dead monkeys.



it was a nice day, with a nice view, and a nice place to sit on top of the van...one of the coolest rides ive ever had before.





what we arrived to when we finally found the village we were looking for. (most of the women didnt feel the same way about clothing that we do in america, so i tried to avoid taking those pictures...)



one of the chief's wives


lewis meeting with the villagers, introducing our group and why we were there


after much convincing that we werent there to steal their diamonds, they softened up a bit..





excited to see themselves on a camera



the walk down to the diamond fields


the pile of dirt on the right is an example of the kind of dirt they look for diamonds in....they just take a pan full of dirt and go into the water and start a lookin





the walk back to the village





next we went on a little canoe trip on a river between guinea and sierra leone to a waterfall...i didnt want my ipod to get soaked so there arent many pictures of the canoing...






soooo that was a good day, a lot more happened than what these pictures show, but it just took me over 3 hours to get these up, so my energy level to tell you more is pretty limited right now. but it was a blast and a great adventure. now for the hope center.

phew.

1 comment:

  1. i loved this blog!!! Can't wait to talk with you when you get home!!!!!

    ReplyDelete