Day Twelve: Did I Say 77 Km? I meant 92.

The Saga of Emma’s Box

This is a saga.  A saga about Emma Prasher’s box.  It’s a bit twisting and turning…and at times dark (we couldn’t always tell what was coming), but I think you’ll find it entertaining.

On the 12th of September, we left Emma’s site after a late and somewhat chaotic arrival the night before.  We were only at her site for about 5.5 hours, yet we unloaded all of our stuff from the car and made ourselves at home.  On the 12th, as we arrived in Kaya and began our unloading process, we realized we were missing a rarely used, yet very important and very cherished box; it was the black box full of tools and equipment essential for making sure our bikes stay humming happily.

Immediately, we all knew that we had to get that box back, tout de suite—we could not lose that box!  We logically concluded that we must have the box at Emma’s house.  Emma called her neighbor, Denise, who keeps her key, to look around and find the missing box.  Luckily, Denise reported that she had found the missing box—hurray!--and agreed to put it on transport that day.  Imagine! Putting a box on transport in Burkina Faso—you  just never know what will happen.

Well, the box made it’s way to Ouagadougou, where notre bonne amie, Kait Brown, promptly turned that box around and sent it north to us in Chris Wells’ site.  We checked the gare (bus station) twice by bed time.  No box.

Well, we had to leave Chris’ site before we could collect the box, on which Kait had labeled “Emma Prasher” in really big letters and “Corps de la Paix” in rather smallish letters.  The gare, getting word that we couldn’t collect the box, sent it back to Ouaga.  At this point, I think lesser people might have resigned themselves to life without Emma’s box.  But—no—we needed that box!  We asked for it to be sent to our next site, and it sat at the gare, paid for and awaiting to be sent the next morning.

Dum, dum, da dum…well, that night, we get a call from Kim Hover, who’s site we were at the night BEFORE Emma’s site.  Turns out she found our box of bike equipment.

That begged the question:  What's in Emma's box?

This afternoon, after a LOOONG day of biking 92 km (after a late start because of a rain storm), we got to Ryan Barthel’s and Daniel DoVell’s new site.  Our driver, Nana, checked the gare for us and came back with the most exciting nouvelles:  Emma’s box was found!

With mounting anticipation and camera’s at the ready (we just had to document the opening of Emma’s box), we all crowded around.  Fingers tore and wrappings fell to the ground.  What we found was…

…a water filter and a bottle of Publix brand pancake syrup.

Yup.  It turns out that Denise had gone into Emma’s house, looked through her black SUITCASE, and picked out a couple choice items to send.  We think some of the confusion might have started when Emma persisted in trying to describe the box to Denise as a “package” (in a French accent, of course) when she should have been saying “boite.”  Peut-etre.

After FIVE days of wondering, the mystery of Emma’s box is solved.  Big sigh of contentment.  And I think we’re all really looking forward to breakfast tomorrow.

Other than that excitement, it was a BEAUTIFUL day, though incredibly muddy.  Josh and Evan show off their newly-decorated shirts...

Nana helps us clean the mud off our bikes...

 Daniel and Ryan welcome us to Dedougou...

'Til tomorrow!