Why I Love Coca-Cola

In 2003, my father put together a team from Canada to go to Mali, West Africa, to conduct a humanitarian mission.  Our goal was to inform villages out in the remote parts of the country on how to prevent the spread of HIV.  I was only a young boy of twelve years old, and since I had grown up in Mali from the age of five to nine years old, my father allowed me to come along and see where I used to live.  During the trip, we decided to go on a day hike up the Dogon cliffs located at the edge of the Sahara Desert.  The Dogon cliffs were about four hours away from any civilization and electricity, and the hike was going to be a 13 kilometer hike. The first part was going straight up the cliff about 200 feet.  The path up this cliff was not an easy one, one slip up, and you would have fallen to your death.  Once we arrived at the top of the cliff, we saw a small village in the distance.  This village was very minimalistic, and their only water source was from a well.  When we got to the edge of the village, one of the elders came to us, and asked if we were thirsty.  The group agreed that they were in fact thirsty, and the elderly man brought us to a shack.  When he opened the door, we couldn’t believe our eyes.  From the dirt floor to the ceiling, Coca-Cola was stacked crate upon crate.  Here in the middle of nowhere, someone had taken the time to bring all these crates up the cliff.  It must have been a tedious job.  We bought a few Coca-Colas from the man, and right there on a cliff, in the middle of Africa, I enjoyed the taste of that Coca-Cola.  Even though it was warm, nothing could have tasted better.