(Today I’m posting the beginning of my travel log of our journey to Burkina Faso. I’ll be updating this series a few times a week with tales all the way from Paris to West Africa. Don’t be confused by my present tense writing; I’m not actually there anymore, but sharing our experiences the way we felt them as I wrote them down. This way it is really a journey together.)

As I write this I’m flying over the border between Arkansas and Oklahoma. Hello! I think, to the places I have and haven’t been below, on roads in Oklahoma. This plane will put us in Atlanta, Georgia–soon, really, and after that we’ll board a plane to Paris; a fact that I like to toss into the air nonchalantly. “Soon we’ll be in Paris,” I say, with just the right amount of emphasis on Paris, not too much or too little.

I should probably introduce myself. Hi. I’m Rachel Ford, guest blogger. I usually blog at Journey Mama. I have the incredible opportunity to write about the Do Some Good Now project (which I secretly like to call the Do Some Good Already Project) and Paris is totally not the point. Just a convenient way to get to our real destination: Burkina Faso.

Have you heard of it? If you watch the Amazing Race, (which I usually don’t, and had to scratch my head to reference what it was called just now… the Greatest Race? That Big Ol’ Race? Rat Race?) you have seen Burkina Faso recently. Or, more accurately, you have seen crazy reality show contestants trying to milk camels in Burkina Faso. Which is not at all our plan. As far as I know.

But what I have learned is that Burkina Faso is a fairly sizable country, land-locked in the Sahel, a region of arid land south of the Sahara, and it’s there that we are headed, to discover the work of the “Earth Roofs in the Sahel,” project. In Paris we will meet with Thomas Granier, and Antoine Horellou, Directors of Association La Voûte Nubienne, the visionaries who are heading this project up.

West Africa is a place that I’ve only ever dreamed of seeing, and I revel in these moments right now, moments of dreaming. Because once you are somewhere, you’ve never not-been there again. Am I right?

Now that I’ve introduced myself, let me introduce my beautiful traveling companions, Jessie Benkert and Cindy Kruschel. If you know LJUrban at all, you probably know Jessie, the incredible wife of Levi Benkert, LJUrban’s owner. You may not have met Cindy, our intrepid and inquisitive friend. Together we are embarking on a journey that will teach us new things about the world we live in.

Maybe one day you’ll be sitting and talking with us while we tell our stories in person. Or maybe you’ll eat soup with all of us one day. Who knows, but over the course of this journey you’ll get to know us well, I think. I promise to share a lot. We want you to travel with us, in a way, to see this through the eyes that we have brought with us, halfway across the world.

We have a mission, the best kind of mission there is, to explore. We are here to learn about the people of Burkina Faso, to enter into their homes, to find ways to express their needs. We are here for the revolutionary act of saying, “It’s Not Fair.” It’s not fair that so many people have homes that are safe and dry, and that some people don’t. It’s not fair that people live in extreme poverty.

The idea is a way of living where every choice you make is a choice of empowerment. Every day you can influence someone’s life in a way that lifts it up. The idea is finding our kinship, so that we are not only consumers, but brothers and sisters with our global neighbors. The idea is this crazy opportunity: If you buy a home with LJUrban, you will be influencing the global economy for the better. Specifically, you will be creating jobs in Burkina Faso, enabling better houses to be built.

In buying a home, we carve a place for ourselves, but not only for us, but our friends across the world, the ones who can so greatly benefit from our resources, the ones who don’t have the water we do, the trees we do. We want to help to make a better way of life for the people in the Sahel.

And here I am with my traveling companions, ready to reach in and find a new place to be in the world. Burkina Faso, home to some of the poorest people on the earth, a place of art and music and a large sub-Saharan desert, where we’ve heard that there are people whom we can help. Who will we meet? What kind of connections will we make? What will we see?

All I know is that I am sure we will be changed. For me, the world stretches a little, with every place I go, giving me one more place to hold in my heart.