Underwear - for Over There - a return trip to Senegal Africa

As we headed to the airport in Portland, we had five large bags with us, packed to the maximum weight - fifty pounds apiece.  It was quite a load, and prompted some questions:

Where are you going?  And what's in the bags?

The short answers:  Africa ... and Underwear.

Among the many needs in developing countries are ladies under garments.  Not only that, but women have special hygiene needs that recur on a monthly basis.  And we had a bunch of stuff for that too ...  

In fact, we had a whole bunch of these items.  More than three hundred pairs of new under pants, and over five hundred new washable feminine hygiene pads.   

This was the result of an effort on the part of Andando and Hub City Church in a campaign called: 

"Underwear for Over There"

With donations from many, we are able to address a need in Senegal, West Africa, brought up to us by an organizational partner.    The team works with women who have been incarcerated - a forgotten and overlooked group.  This is a somewhat uncommon situation, but a real need.

So we rallied the troops and came up with a large number that will be put to good use.   Anything to help, eh?

But a small problem remained - how to get all these products over there.  It took a lot of time to pack.  We had to remove all the packaging, because of bulk size and the we didn't want to arouse suspicion with such a quantity of new items.   Are you guys importing products to sell?

And of course, we're used to packing and repacking to make size and weight limits for the airlines.   And with all our travels, we have frequent flyer status that allows us to take so many bags with no extra charge, a big bonus.

As I write this we're in the airport in Paris France.  It won't be long till be arrive and can transport these to our partner organization there.   Another example of connecting (in a rather intimate way) with people around the globe to provide help.


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As we made the handoff today with our local contacts, they were amazed by how much we brought.