Garden of Eden

From as early as I could remember we would go camping every year for a week or two in April. This was between the hot dry season and the coming rainy season. Since we were at Boarding School for 9 months out of the year in the Ivory Coast, we were on a trimester system. So we had a short 3 week vacation around Easter. It became a tradition for a lot of the Burkina missionaries to come from all over the country to this one place to go camping. This was the "Garden of Eden."

Burkina is a savanna landscape, that means means it's relatively bare with random assortments of bushes, trees and tall grass. There are a few areas, however, where rivers flow through the country and are surrounded by a lush, green landscape. The Ganguette River was such a place, the most beautiful. The river flows from what we called the "source." The source was a shallow area which the water bubbled up from the bottom, through the rocks and sand. It was covered with brush and trees, you couldn't stand up under here. My dad spent hours snorkeling here, looking for precious stones.

The water flowed downstream from there in a heavy current, but pooled in several different areas. We named each pool, one was the Protestant pool, the other was the Nun's pool. The Nun's pool was where we spent most of our time. There was more bank to work with. We would jump off the side or swing in on a vine. One of the dads tied a rope to the big tree hanging over and we would swing from the bank and drop in the middle.

The water was completely clear. You could see every rock at the bottom of the river. It was really an incredible place. Sometimes we would work our way upstream, which was very taxing, then we would just lay back and float back down. In fact we made a whole day's event out of it. We would get on some big innertubes and start at the nuns pool and float downriver for about an hour or so to the bridge, which is where the rest of the crew would meet us with lunch. Then we would sun there for a couple of hours and then drive back into our campsite.

Now camping in Africa is so different from here. We had the macdaddy tents with the screened in porch area, bunk bed cots, a port-a-potty. Some missionaries would dig a hole for an outhouse. That's the part I didn't like. Mom had a whole cabinet just for camping dishes and appliances. Every few days someone would ride into town to get big blocks of ice for our coolers. We took baths and washed our clothes in the river. We mainly wore bathing suits all day.

The only thing we had to worry about were snakes and hippos. I used to be a little freaked about that. The hippos would come out at night, you could hear them thrashing around on the river banks. Some of the older kids would be daring, or maybe it was stupid, and they would go swimming at night. The called it "hippo swimming" or something like that. Random Fact: Did you know that one hippo molar is the size of a saucer? My biggest fear, however, was and still is to this day, seaweed. My mom says that when I was really young she had me on a tube to float down river and I got stuck by myself in a blob of seaweed. That explains itself.

So, I used to think that the Bible was mistaken and God did not forbid anyone from entering the Garden of Eden. Because, to me, this was a pretty perfect place--aside from the grubs, snakes, seaweed and hippos. To little me, it was THE Garden!