That Chad is so hot right now (OMG)

When it rains in Chad, you take photos.
This is from last week's trip to Oum Hadjar.
If your car doesn't have a faux-fur dash cover,
you aren't cool.

It’s hot season in Chad. It is the season that is spoken of by natives and foreigners alike in gasped groans. Expats share tips for “making it through” the hot season, and natives constantly ask if you are going to be OK, not being used to the hot season as they are. Years before I ever came to Chad or ever thought about coming to Chad, I heard someone talk about coming home from work while he was living in Chad and wanting to be able to open his head like a Pez candy dispenser in order to re-hydrate himself more quickly and efficiently. I thought it was an evocative image.

I, as you know, like the heat. I genuinely prefer it to the cold. People often say cold is better because you can always put on more clothes, but I don’t mind walking around the house in my underwear. I do, however, hate having to wear socks. They pinch and rub my toes and make my feet feel claustrophobic. But if I don’t wear them in cold weather places, I can never warm up. I especially loathe sunny cold days. It feels like the sun is lying to me, and I don’t like to be lied to. If it looks warm outside, I want it to be.

Post dust-storm clean up

I wasn't the only one in the car taking pictures
Even Chadians marvel.

Here in Chad, there is no deceptive weather. You look outside and it could either be sunny and hot or dusty and hot. It was chilly and dusty back in January, but I still was ok without socks. But I will admit to you that it is hot these days. It is hotter than most other hot places. Outside the sun pounds heat into your houses, turning them into crackling fire pits, without the fun of an actual fire. And we aren’t exactly an air conditioner type of country here. I have fans in my house and fans in the office that supplement our AC, which doesn’t actually work (but we leave it on anyway for morale). Without these fans, I am a sweaty mess. I mean, it takes about 10 seconds away from the fans to start sweating. You feel it first trickling out of the pores under your hair before it slides down the back of your neck and soaks into the back of your shirt . You notice every time you stand up that your skirt is wet and sticking to your legs. Actually, that is true even when you have been sitting in front of a fan, because your butt is blocked from the air by the chair you’re sitting in.

We ate mangos in this garden while visiting project sites.
It's a hard life out here.

Hot season is not all bad. I mean, it is also mango season, which I’ve enjoyed much more now that I figured out I could tell people I prefer the hard mangos to the gushy ones. People are happy about this because they all prefer the gushy ones. Also, I spill things a lot but never worry about slipping on puddles because they dry up in seconds. My hair also dries quickly coming out of the shower (aka bucket bath), which is great because I hate putting up my hair when it’s wet. Someone once told me that if you braid your hair while it’s wet, it will mildew. That really sounds possible to me, so I like to let it dry before I lump it on top of my head in a ball. And speaking of showers (or bucket baths because there is not enough water pressure here to make the shower work), they are always warm. Water that sits in plastic buckets is heated to the temperature of the room, which is usually 90-100 degrees (I’m skipping Celsius right now because let’s be honest: Fahrenheit just sounds hotter). And who doesn’t love a warm shower? 

But without the fans, life is tough.

So imagine my deep distress this week when not only did I lose electricity (which had been amazingly and impressively constant over the weeks since I’ve been Chez Naomi), but I also lost solar power. This means that I no longer had fans or the means to charge my electronic devices—two of the things that are an important part of my good nature.

We slept together.
I only pushed him off the
bed one time.

The first night I made do with the little battery fans, like the ones that I used in Mundri. Fortunately, I’d bought some batteries in Kenya in anticipation of a trip to the field with a Danish man who was worried about temperatures rising above freezing in a desert climate. That trip didn’t happen but the batteries definitely saved lives. I slept at night clutching the fan in front of my face. I still woke up more times than usual, feeling extremely dehydrated on soaking wet sheets. Once I woke up when the cat yowled and I thought he was going to get annoying about going outside, but he just was upset about getting hit in the face by a pillow I threw off the bed in an effort to have less things touching me.

If you are reading this
from your iPhone,
then this photo is
actual size for this fan.

 Without electricity or solar, it is also a lot darker at night, which I do prefer because I sleep better without lights, but it also caused me to be completely disoriented one night when I heard a cat fight that I wanted to break up, fearing the involvement and/or near-death of Felix. Suddenly I found myself walking into a door that I didn’t know was there. I spun around in circles, running into things and trying to figure out which direction I was walking. I had a brief moment of wondering if I could ever make it back to bed or have to sleep on the floor with the cockroaches (though Felix had eaten one earlier that night to prove his merits to me—it is a good merit to eat the roaches). After some time, I found the shelf and realized I was holding the little hippo knick-knack that sits on the book stand in the living room, and then managed to turn myself back into the bedroom where I found the bed and my phone, charged by the beautiful and hardy battery that I’d dropped on the concrete floor earlier and put back together later in the office. (Thanks Cherry for the Christmas present, and Kandos for fixing it, even though I kept gasping and telling him not to break anything whenever he snapped something on the plastic casing.) I flipped the light on my phone and saw Felix limp his way back inside, tail all poofy and bits of white fur stuck to his neck. I did a quick check of the kitchen to make sure that no foreign cats were inside and went back to bed, clutching my fan.

Bedroom solar fan, which
I initially thought didn't work
very well, until I compared
it to the battery fan.

Finally, yesterday, after many attempts, the amazing Rich brought over a new battery and hooked it up. So I had solar power that worked, and this time, it worked all night. Not like the time he’d fixed it and it had worked until 2:23am and then I had to go back to clutching my battery fans. This time I had real lights so that I could cook in the kitchen without a headlamp and see all the places I’d missed trying to shave in the dark for Pool Day at the Hilton N’Djamena (yeah, we’re fancy). And solar-powered 12-volt fans are a step up from battery-fans. But you know what is even way better than 12-volt fans? Actual fans, powered by electricity.

BURN ALL THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Because The Children are smart. They will figure out a way to make more powerful solar-powered fans by the time we have used up all the oil.

In the meantime, I’m sitting on the couch and the beautiful fan is blowing in my face. I’m not sweating. I am thirsty, though. (It takes a long time to rehydrate.) After 5.5 days of fan-clutching and darkness, my power is finally back on. I no longer hate everybody I hated before. Now there are one or two people that I can forgive while basking in the cool fan air.

So, in conclusion, I’d like to thank my fans. None of this would have been possible without you. You really are the best fans in the world. Never forget that. You keep me going every day. Keep it real, fans. Peace and Love.

And to leave you with a sermon, since I skipped church yesterday: my life is fine. It is way easier than most people's. And Antani's electricity STILL isn't back on, but at least we have access to clean water here in N'Djamena, while these kids in Oum Hadjer go out to the river bed to dig holes for water for their families. And it's hot there too. And I bet they don't have fans at home that they can go sit in front of. Tell Neverthirst you want to support a biosand filter project here. If I ever finish the budget for that project, it is coming soon. 

In a few months this will be a river again.
Next year they will find and dig-out these holes again.