Chadventures (with Swedes)

Making tortillas
And one benefit of this cooking
experiment is that Marte now
uses cilantro in all her salads.

After an exciting time in Nepal, I headed back to Chad for some more fun times. Partly to celebrate my birthday with Mexican food cooked by me, but mostly because I knew that Leif would be there with some Swedish visitors, and I really like the Swedes in spite of my deep burning hatred for ABBA (if you sing ‘Dancing Queen’ to me, I will have to seriously reconsider our friendship, and you better hope you have some redeeming quality like excellent cooking skills or a love of buying me gummy bears). As usual, time with Swedes involved lots of musical Swedish conversation, mocking of the Equator Girl’s frost-bitten hands from excessive exposure to air-conditioning, and the Pippi Longstocking song being stuck forever in my head. And time with Leif is always an adventure, during which we discuss past adventures he has had and plans for future adventures that I hope I’ll get to join in on.

Emelie made me a cake!

The best adventures happen during times of little sleep. I became the designated drop-off/pick-up in the early morning person. I dropped off Kandos on Saturday at 5am and picked up Leif on Monday at 4:30am, and then I was picked up at 5am on Wednesday so we could make a 900km trip with stops to visit projects on the way. The next two days involved 5am call times too. It’s a glamorous life out here in the development world.

All the project visits went well, in spite of the fact that I was the designated translator for French and Arabic. I enjoy translating, but I don’t know that I’m the best person for the job, especially in French. But fortunately, my French vocabulary is really strong for discussing issues of drilling for wells and planning sanitation programs. In fact, one of our project partners told me with kind surprise that my French is “comprehensible.”  I also enjoyed being closer to the Sudanese border where my Arabic is also more comprehensible to Chadians who enjoy Sudanese music and TV programs.

Drinking tea with the ladies

Putting gas in the car: Chad-stylez

Of course, driving 900km in a Toyota Corolla requires fortitude, as does driving with Leif. In an effort to arrive on time, he maintained a speed of around 150kmh (90mph). This is fine in a low-traffic area on a fairly newly paved road. Unfortunately, the odd animal (cow, donkey, camel, dog) occasionally decides to test the fates and speed across the road. Sadly, one bird and one rabbit (said the Swedes who are tall enough to look over the dashboard—I didn’t even know we had rabbits here) did not make it. Fortunately, we were able to skim between two very unconcerned camels who looked down on us with disdain.

There are also a series of inconveniently located speed bumps spread out across the journey. As Kandos says, “It’s OK. Leif only ever hits one.” The assumption being that after that he gets more careful. This time, I saw it coming. Leif slammed on the brakes and as our wheels squealed and shrieked toward the bump, I had to make a quick decision: do I put the cap back on the cokeI was drinking  (Leif’s beverage of choice) or brace for impact? Survival instinct kicked in, and I chose the latter. As we caught air and flew over the next kilometer, my coke exploded into the air, spraying the unfortunate Bo, in the next seat. He graciously helped me clean it up, once the vehicle stabilized.

Seriously, who wouldn't want to
hang out with these ladies?

Our other adventure was more sobering, but like most sobering adventures, after we weathered the danger, it became the best joke of the trip. Due to the length of the journey and the fact that I am a long-winded translator and I take a long time schmoozing the women in our projects (because I really like them!), we ended up driving the last few hours in the dark. Chadian drivers have the disturbing habit of using their brightest lights for night-time driving. This contributes to much blindness of other drivers, and blind drivers are notorious for accidents. In our case, one such light-polluter temporarily blinded Leif who ended up plowing through a police check-point. As we skidded to a loud halt, our faces falling, we all fully-expected to be thrown in prison for the immediate future. All thoughts of making it to Abeche were dashed into the desert dust.

We all hopped out of the car as soon as it was physically possible at the fist-pounding demand of the senior officer. Leif immediately apologized profusely in Arabic, which charmed all the by-standers who speak Arabic, but not the choleric senior officer who seemed to speak only French. So I jumped in with the woman’s gentle touch. Unfortunately, when wearing a head-scarf, hair-flipping is not an option for diffusing such a situation. I did the wide-eyed innocent look, which he probably saw thanks to the dangerous ambient light of the other car (parked at the check point for unknown reasons).

“You broke our rope! He doesn’t speak French? You tell him that he broke our rope and no one is going to leave until you give us a new rope!”

“We are very very sorry. It is late and he didn’t see the rope and we will pay for it. We are so sorry. It will never happen again. Let us pay you. How much can we pay for the rope?”

“No! You can’t leave. You have to bring us a new rope. Unless you bring a new rope, you will never leave!”

“We don’t have a rope with us, and we can’t get another rope unless you let us go get one. Can we pay for the rope?”

After searching through our car, while all the by-standers and other Arabic speakers assured Leif it was all fine, no harm done, ma3lish, the leader came back to me and insisted again on a new rope.

Leif whipped out his wallet and said, “Here, let me give you some money for a new rope and your tea tonight.” He pressed the rope money into the officer’s hand, and we were cheered on our way while the men at the check-point re-enacted our car sliding into the rope, laughing raucously. Like I said, once we all realized it was not as big of a deal as we all thought, it was pretty hilarious. And the check point has money for a new rope, and everyone ended up having a good time. And I have since told the story in Arabic and French, and listened to it told in Swedish (hand gestures and facial expressions of the listeners helped me to keep up), and everyone has gasped and laughed in all the right places so far.

Chadian kitchen

The rest of our trip was mostly uneventful, but it did involve lots of bumpy roads, LOTS of food, lots of translations, donkeys and camels and interesting water projects. Thankfully for everyone involved, mostly Leif who is still recovering, we caught a flight back to N’Djamena, where we got to enjoy a tour that included seeing hippos in the Chari River  and playing in the very interactive Musée Nationale. I don’t know that it is always so interactive, but we got to play the display instruments and carry the shield and test if it really does keep the spears from going through (it doesn’t, but fortunately, I was able to pull the spear out quickly without any noticeable damage to the shield) and no one yelled at me when I went behind the barrier to play with dinosaur bones that haven’t been re-assembled yet. Chad is a land of freedom. And even if I am in Chad until I am old and gray and decrepit, I will never not be excited about hippos. There will never be a "Oh. Hippo, yeah, whatever" Amanda. There will only be a "Stop the freaking car right now so we can take ALL the pictures!" Amanda. I tried to do that this time, but sadly, the policeman made us leave, and since Leif was not driving, we had to follow police instructions.

So it was a good week and the Swedes had fun in spite of what must have felt like face-melting heat to their Arctic-accustomed bodies (it felt like a happy warm cup of tea to Equator Girl).  We are all alive, and tomorrow I’m off to the Sudans where I can argue in Arabic (Juba-style or Khartoum-style as needed) instead of French, but where I will avoid at all costs accidentally plowing through check points because war-time police are less forgiving and they keep their weapons with them at all times.

And also, special thanks to Johan who made sure to leave me with the names of some Swedish musicians and TV shows that I will appreciate to make up for the fact that Sweden is the country that burdened the world with ABBA. 

Enjoy the following photos:

 

More of my beautiful ladies
(and since apparently, I only go on trips with men, it's nice to meet
ladies in the field)

The watering hole on a Thursday morning

I put the good photo of me and Fatima on Facebook,
so please enjoy this odd set-up shot of us in front of a donkey
while I'm doing something weird with my hand

Well I got a few smiles, but more skeptism.
These cool kids should be in school, but they can't go
because they have to help get water from the water hole,
5 miles away from their home.

Would you drink this water?

This donkey thinks it's fine

My dad, the artist, approved this photo

Drilling a well to help some people not have to go all the way
to the watering hole.

More kids who should be in school.
They were way more excited about this photo than you can
tell from looking at it.

Morning dilemma:
how to get my contact out without touching weird bug?
Morning question:
How did that bug get into a closed contact case?

So Herve and Salim started it all by getting the
shield off the wall and posing for this shot

Then I wanted to try.

I was trying to look fierce, but I look like
I'm hiding behind Herve.
But--true story, I would definitely hide behind him
if someone came at us in battle because he would be
a way better warrior than me.
Although-this photo was taken after I proved
to him that I could poke the spear through the shield.
I yanked it out quickly, and I don't think you can tell--can you?

Dinosaur bones!!!

Yes, I had to touch them and offer my help putting them back together

The head!

I don't know why this photo, but I appreciate that Bo is
also a rule-breaker. It's in his Viking blood.