The long and winding road…

Well, I’ve been here in Senegal, Africa for 25 days so far on this trip.  My intention was to come back to Senegal, purchase the land that I found last trip and begin construction on the Son of Africa project.  The sooner I could get this done, the sooner I would have a home to shelter the little homeless Talibe boys.  Not as easy as I thought it would be though.

Here in Senegal, there is a new anti-money laundering law.  Any money coming into Senegal has to be verified that it has been earned by a legit source.  I had been waiting for a money transfer to arrive from Canada and kept going into the bank to see if it had arrived.  Day after day… nothing.  Finally a couple days ago, after a discussion with my bank in Canada and an email of the swift money draft, I headed back to the bank.  Hmmmmm… there it was… waiting.  I just had to get all my ducks in a row now to have it released.  As I mentioned before in a post, I do not speak the African language here, and my French,… well, that’s another story involving my grade 10 French teacher who, after a couple days in class, asked me to leave and never return.  At any rate, when I really need to understand something, I use drawings to be sure.  Hence… the plan.

Now, it was supposed to work this way.  We would take my verification along and meet Mbaye, the man selling the land, get some paperwork and signatures from him and go to the bank here in Dakar.  From there, the information would be passed onto the “big bank” and they would see everything was in place and release the funds.  See the happy smiling me holding the $$$?  Well the plan stopped right before that happened.  It would take a while… more than the rest of the day, and apparently, more than the rest of the following day.  I just returned from the bank with the news that tomorrow is the day.

I was facebooking with a friend from my school days who spent some time living overseas some years back.  Her advice: Ahhh the joys of transferring funds to a 3rd world – doesn’t this just bring back memories – it never went on a clock, as most things. Take a long walk on that cold beach (LOL) and find your happy place.

Don’t force things to happen, it will all happen when it is right. Miss ya and Love ya Lor

Good advice……and that’s just what I am going to do.  Tomorrow is another day and maybe the last line of the plan will come through and Son of Africa will have its land.  Stay tuned!