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The scenery in the Upper West region of Ghana is not dissimilar to Burkina Faso: flat dusty plains of arid red earth, that even now in during the rainy season kicks up a cloud of fine red dust as we drive by. Whilst the towns are becoming more Christian, the region is still predominantly Islamic, and traditional earthen mosques dotted with wooden struts to allow builders to climb the structures to reapply fresh layers of mud and earth to the walls, are a common site in even the smallest settlements we pass on the way to Wa.

Wa, the regional capital and principal town of the Upper West, is a sprawling community town. Because of poor roads and the long distances from any other major town, Wa is a town that seems a place in itself, cut off from the rest of the country. Only early morning buses link Wa with Tamale and Kumasi, and from Kumasi to Accra. Like Bobo Dioulasso, a substantial town with a village feel about it, Wa retains a surprisingly strong sense of locality.

In Wa we are hosted by Eric Coomans, a retired Dutch school teacher who 3 years ago founded Child Support, a grassroots NGO providing support to children in need. Working with orphaned, malnourished and abused children, Child Support works with the local hospital, schools and health centres in providing the attention and support these children need, with the aim of nursing children back to health and reintegrating them back in to their families and communities.

Bobo is a delightful city. Smaller than Bamako, and much greener, with an alluringly laid back feel. The city seems a microcosm of Burkina Faso itself: a stable poorer relation to its more resource rich neighbours. On the streets we sample caterpillars, deep fried and eaten in a baguette with onions and a little palm oil. Caterpillars are in season.

Through Ibrahim we were told about Fischer Barnabe, a French Rastafarian living in Bobo who has for many years run a home for abandoned children. We visit his compound and are promptly invited to stay. We accept his offer and soon settle in to a guest house and two tents. We share the compound with 9 children (8 children were recently reunited with their families), two volunteers and Mr Barnabe and his family. Everyone seemed happily: the children smiled and played freely in the yard, whilst the volunteers and helpers prepared traditional home cooked food. The children called Mr Barnabe “Uncle”, and it didn’t feel contrived or in any way unhealthy. In his own quiet and unassuming way Mr Barnabe impressed us on a personal level. With the support of the local community and the dedication of a small number of committed donors in France he has created a refuge for children in need, providing these children a safe and healthy place to live and grow whilst efforts are made to reintegrate them into their own families and communities.

We awake at dawn the next day and after a heavenly cup of sweet coffee and some old baguettes bought from a local stall just outside of the immigration compound we’re loaded back on the buses and on through police, gendarme, immigration and customs checks. Once across the border it’s a short ride to Kayes, where we change buses just as a squall hits the town. Rain comes as a relief, clearing the air of dust. Rains are certainly dramatic in this part of the world.

The bus from Kayes is even older, but a more comfortable ride with 4 rather than 5 passengers to each row. We arrive early the following morning in Bamako, in pitch darkness, and without a place to stay we join Carlos and make our way to the Maison de Jeunes were we pitch our tents for our stay on the banks of the Niger river.

In Bamako we meet and document the work of the Mali Health Project (MHOP), a grassroots NGO working with slum dwellers on the city’s edge. MHOP was founded 5 years ago by a visionary 19 year old American student volunteering in Mali, Caitlin Cohen, and in this short time has been integral in creating contact between a once forgotten community and the local government, and dramatically improved child mortality rates and basic standards of public health amongst some of Mali’s most vulnerable people.

Upon reaching Senegal there is a real sense of having crossed a natural border. Green shoots rise through the desert sands; the stern pale faces of the Mahgrib are replaced by the easy smiles of dark West Africa. Everywhere now there are people, walking along side the road, working in fields, carrying stores. Catching a local bus at the border we travel through the night to Dakar.

We arrive in Dakar just past 2am and are met by Amadou, our local host. Dakar is on a different scale to every city we have visited so far. A bustling mass of people and cultures, set against the lazy air of a French colonial past. Mosques call the faithful to prayers as American hip-hop beats continually from a side stall. Foreign expatriates and tourists in loose khakis and thin cotton shirts walk by street sellers eyeing a potential sale.

We had planned to reach Mali on the Dakar-Bamako Express, once one of the great railway journeys of the world.

Our concerns that the foundation would be politically motivated were totally unfounded. What we discovered was more than a foundation promoting Mauritania’s rich artistic and cultural heritage, but trying hard to empower the people to move their country forward. Far from being conservative, the foundation espoused through it support of the arts a progressive view of Saharan Africa, of a place where imagination I encouraged, and a vision for Mauritania is actively debated.

Miriam Ould Daddah is, like her son, fascinating company. She is a formidable French lady, a student of history and law, and a lady who not only braved but came to love the wild Saharan landscape of Mauritania. She describes herself as Mauritanian first, French second. No dowager, but an enlightened lady with a real connect with the people that she shares her home. To the foundation, the arts are not for the sake of art, but part of the wider tapestry of culture and personal development.

Andrew Dymock, a soft spoken Englishman who currently heads up the team, tells us how doulos has changed over the years, from being a charity primarily providing aid in the form of hand-outs to now providing community development through collaboration with local leaders and organizations. But from its inception doulos has remained true to its philosophy of community integration, to understand and address the issues facing the poor by living amongst them.

We are also privileged to meet with Karen Boyle, programmes director of doulos and one of the original students at Princeton University (US) who helped establish the organization. Her dedication is inspiring. From the ease in which she carries herself in this challengingly poor environment to her interaction with locals, she embodies the spirit of doulos and is an example of how accepted a foreign, Christian woman can be in the deeply conservative and Islamic communities of Nouakchott.

In Arafat district we visit schools and private and communal farming projects doulos and their partners have initiated and helped fund. Seeing mature woman learn basic numeracy was especially touching. Learning to count is so fundamental to our lives, from buying and selling to remembering the telephone numbers of loved ones, it is hard for us to comprehend not knowing how. Often in our rush to address seemingly bigger, more complex problems, we overlook the little things that mean the most to a community.

We arrived at 1:30 at the train station 5km out of town. The station is a surreal bustle of lazy activity amongst rolling sand dunes, Women seated by small ramshackle stalls selling apples, bruised bananas, hard boiled eggs and sweet flavoured drinks; people watching behind long scarves and the flowing robes of desert people, talking, resting, passing time in wait for the train to arrive.

Our quest to ride the iron train-cum-public-transport derives from our vision to travel as locals do, while giving us a way to connect, share and receive ideas and thoughts with the recently urbanized nomad population of Mauritania: the unofficial border country between Western Arab and sub-Saharan Africa.

Initial rumors regarding the estimated time of departure were obtained from market ladies by the WTYSL team through sign language and time codes written in sand. Conductors of other trains would hold up numbers with their hands to report the new estimated time of arrival. The overall conclusion was that the train would arrive at 6 pm, not 2:30, as has been published worldwide via internet. Time stood still and we entered utopia, sipping superb tea sold at 10 cent a cup by a old man; probably the best shot of mint tea with sugar in northern Mauritania. By the time Nirvana was upon us, 6 o’clock had come around, and new times began to pop up – 7:00, 8:30, 10:30 pm… There was no end to the possibilities. As the sun went down over the sand-duned horizon we became truly ‘localized’ – inspired by our nomad neighbours also waiting for the train, we build a windshield out of bags, collected firewood and created a fire.

At 11:30 pm, kilometers of empty iron ore wagons began to emerge; people were yelling and getting mobilized to storm the last 2 wagons; we saw a man jump 6 feet into the air to grab an open window to crawl through while the mad rush jammed the doors, throwing luggage up in the air like nobody’s business. We quickly realized we wouldn’t be able to compete with the locals for a spot in the wagons and plan B was launched: we ran over to an iron ore wagon, climbed up, and started moving our luggage from the sand dunes to the bottom of the wagon.

5 minutes later the train slowly pushed forward into the night; relief and excitement was at large. The moonlight decorated our faces and so did the sand – followed by a quick revelation that you can’t breathe as such; anxiety how we will survive the night emerges. One of our tents is put up to protect our bags; another tent is used as a floor on the hard metal. Sleeping begins; every turn and tweak the wagon makes is felt throughout the entire body… Imagine trying to fall asleep in a rollercoaster and then add sand in your eyes, ears and mouth.

What makes the experience epic is the importance this route has to the people of Mauritania; it’s a one of a kind, free alternative to move yourself from A to B. Traveling as locals had never felt better; after 10 hours on the train we reach Choum where we changed to a packed up pickup; 6 people inside the car and 7 people in the bed, and the WTYSL team were of course those 7 hardcore people in the back on top of a pile of luggage stacked 3 feet over the bed’s capacity and held in with net. Throughout the 4 hours through the canyons and dune-ridden landscapes boasting shades of red, tan and yellow, we felt as if we had landed on Mars.

Arriving at Atar, it takes us one hour plus to mobilize the owner and driver of a bush taxi to take us to the capital. Without enough sleep the driver finally agrees to take the team and 2 more passengers down south. In the car with 10 people packed like sardines at 40 degrees Celsius (105 Fahrenheit), the air surrounding us becomes a sauna. A 6 hour ride turns into a 10 hour struggle against the machine a.k.a. the car we are travelling in. First problem: 2 hours after departure the tire bursts and changing it adds 45 minutes to the ride. Second problem: finding another tire to replace the next flat adds another hour. Third problem: at every police control the engine dies, forcing us to get out of the car and push-start the taxi again. It usually took us 3 or 4 pushes before the engine finally agreed to get back into the game. 4th problem: 6 hours down the road the car stops – we are out of fuel. The driver hitchhikes back to a town to pick up more fuel and the incident added 1 hour to our bush taxi experience.

At 2am our host, Azzedine Ould Daddah, the son of the first president of Mauritania, graciously drives 60km out of Nouakchott to pick up 7 tired travelers covered in sand stranded on the side of the road. We had reached the end of a chapter on our epic journey across Africa.

The following day we travel east of Layounne to the desert town of Smara, the scene of significant protest against the occupying Morrocan authority in 2005, to speak to Sahwari activists.

As soon as we step off the bus in Layounne to the time we leave for Al Dakla we are followed. There is a significant security presence and the tension on the street is noticeable. Although WTYSL is non-political and we are here only with an interest in human stories, it soon becomes clear the state of occupation is the single most important social as well as political issue. Any attempt to improve the condition of people living in the region, whether native Sahwari or Morrocan, must involve a serious attempt at a political resolution.

We would also wish to thank all those who agreed to speak with us.

American main act performers Arrested Development were kind enough to give us an interview to explain their vision of empowering Africans through their concerts, speeches, and financial giving. Our team was very impressed with the groups candidacy and humbleness.

Front man MC Speech is a proponent of “conscious rap” as opposed to mainstream gangster rap. He chooses to write songs with a message to encourage and uplift people faced with the harsh realities of the world.

His music covers many themes he feels passionately about in the US and Africa. He sings about his relationship with God and speaks of incorporating traditional African values into his life. He believes African Americans and Africans can relate to his message of overcoming struggles. The group is led by elder Bob (“Bob-Bob”). Ishu, a backup singer and dancer, shared with us that she has family in Accra, Ghana.

The band is also accompanied by JJ, Tasha, “One Love” and Zay. Each band member gives to African charities of their choice.and the group was the first African American group to give to the African National League (ANC) in South Africa and after recently appearing on an ABC program gave to UNICEF in The Congo.