Traviling to Mali

I left PDX at 10:30 PM on a red eye to New York. I was excited that my layover was 18 hours so that I could have a chance to see the city. When I got there I found a place to store my luggage and caught a train into Manhattan. I got off the train and after I made my way through the underground portion of the station to the street level, I looked around to see Madison Square Garden right behind me. Then, I turned down the first street I saw, and just down it a few blocks was the Empire State Building. The trek to the top is rather long, but the view is something else for sure. From there, I walked to Times Square and even in the daytime it was lit up like a thousand Christmas trees. I finally made my way back to the airport just in time to wait four hours for my plane to board.

The next stop was Casablanca, Morocco. Once I was on the ground it was quite a task to get through arrivals on to departures. I followed the crowd to a large room where customs officials were checking documents. I handed mine to the man, and he informed me that I needed a white paper and pointed to the back where stacks of them lay. Thankfully the instructions were printed in English as well as French and Arabic. Once that was in order, I wandered around in the baggage claim area until I asked a guard how to get to departures. After many gestures and a few grunts he pointed me in the right direction and I finally made it to the main entrance to the airport.  Getting through departures was a little tricky as they had a 10k weight limit on carry-on luggage and my bag was 16k. The excess baggage charge was going to be 600 Dirhams, or about 70 USD. Needless to say, I began throwing away things that were not super important, and filling my cargo pockets with books. With that settled, I could wait at my gate for the plane to depart; and it finally did about 8 hours later.

I arrived in Mali in the early morning and Steve from Avant Ministries was there to take me to my new home. Then I slept – for 16 hours.