Expeditions in the Sahara

Posing for Herve. Also trying not to get knocked
over by the wind

I’ve been putting off writing about the Faya trip because while most of it was a lot of fun, there were some pretty low moments too. I can’t really write about those, not because I am trying to keep up my perfect image, but because it isn’t stuff I should just put out there on the internet for my mom and the odd person searching for articles about “dangdut music” for their paper on obscure musical traditions to read. That’s why we have Whatsapp—for private conversations.  But here are a few stories and lots of photos and a video that might work.

After a week in Morocco hanging with Swedes and some other cool people, I hit the road for a 2 day drive across the desert. And of course “road” only applies to the first 2 or so hours of the trip. But that pavement is actually quite smooth in a few places!

For me, I love a good road trip. I made some pumpkin bread because it’s Fall somewhere and peanut butter cookies because they’re easy to make and they last well (for future reference, pumpkin bread made with preservative-free real pumpkin does not last long in the heat—it melts and I had to throw out most of the bread, sadly). We loaded up on water and piled all our stuff up high in the car and headed out ready for sand and dirt and sand and camels and sand. It was the first trip north for all of the Chadians in the car except for the driver. I felt like a wonderful tour guide, shuttling people around their own country to a town I’ve already been to twice. They were all excited about the trip and very happy to see another part of the country. Many photos were taken and a few bottles full of sand came back to N’Djamena with us.

 I’d planned on camping a bit on the way there and back (two-day trip through the desert without a variety of hotel options to choose from), but I didn’t count on Chadian hospitality.  It’s pretty impressive--would you be welcomed to sleep inside an American government building if you were passing through town and needed a place to crash? Doubtful. But I really wanted to sleep outside under the stars. Because stars way out in the desert away from all ambient light except for a few flashlights and a campfire or two, are pretty epic. Also, to be completely honest, the idea of sleeping in close quarters with a bunch of snoring men was not exciting to me. But since it was very cold, I decided to sleep in the car. Apparently, though, my decisions mean nothing. It was 4 against 1 and no one accepted that I sleep in the car alone in the beautiful quiet dark night because “La securité!” “It’s too cold/dangerous/whatever. And look, we have made your bed up in here so that you will be a bit separate from us.” I was in a little side room, but I was still not separate enough not to hear their loud, unsynchronized snores. If they had been synchronized, I might have been able to sleep, but as they were not, I only dozed a bit. Also, one blanket on the hard cement floor does not provide the level of cushion my body is used to sleeping on, which admittedly isn’t much considering my mattress at home has a crater in the middle into which gravity pulls everything. So I got up with a few bruises on the hipbones. It was very cold (the equivalent of a nice summer day in Sweden), so Herve and I wrapped up the turbans and went to stand in the sunshine while we waited for everyone else to get ready. This is when he decided to tell me the cautionary tale about that one time an NGO team went to Iriba during the cold season and let their driver sleep inside the car over night.

“The next day, they found his dead body—like this!” he said, holding his hands up like claws in front of his face (see the photo). He was very serious about this story until I fell over laughing. It was something to hold on to because the image of Herve pretending to be the frozen corpse of a mythical driver made me laugh randomly whenever I thought about it for the rest of a slightly stressful week.

Herve doing "the frozen corpse."

On our trip back, we stopped in a little village that let us sleep in a visitor’s shelter, a little shack made of sticks.  I’d learned from the trip out not to sleep within earshot of Herve, so I opted to sleep in the car. Unfortunately, Herve was mad at the driver for arbitrarily deciding to stop in this little town instead of driving on to the bigger town where we could presumably sleep in a small hotel, and he refused to sleep in the visitor’s shelter and said he wanted to sleep in the car. I wouldn’t let him, and he slept outside in a huffy pile of blankets. I was freezing inside the car with my airplane blankets and sarong so I pulled out a weird aluminum foil thing given to me by a friend, which was supposed to keep people warn in the event of an injury while being transported to get medical attention. It sounded like World War 3 when I opened it up, but I crawled in. Every time I turned over, it probably woke up the entire neighborhood, so I tried to keep still, but it wasn’t a quiet night.

Covered in blankets I stole from various airplanes
and an army-green tin foil sleeping bag.

Huffy pile of Herve blankets

Probably the drive there and back was one of the best parts of the trip, but I also enjoyed fulfilling a life-long dream of sliding down sand dunes. Or anyway, if it wasn’t a life-long dream, it was at least from the first time I went to Faya when we tried and failed to slide down the dunes. We didn’t have the right equipment. Fortunately, our host’s kids know all about sand dune sliding and they taught me their tricks. We had lots of fun and I had sand in my hair and ears for a week after we left Faya. Hopefully the video attaches so you can see how fun it is and immediately book your next vacation in the nearby Faya Oasis Desert Resort. Accommodations are rustic and do not include beds, indoor plumbing or electricity. You will be generously hosted. The moment you wake up at 5:30am with the sun and the bruises from sleeping on packed dirt floors, you will be given hot sweet tea and spaghetti noodles (no sauce). Around 9am, you will have a larger breakfast of goat meat and baguettes. Lunch will consist of a blob of starchy substance, called “aseeda” in Arabic, eaten with a very tasty goat meat stew, and dinner will be pasta with a goat meat sauce. All meals are eaten communally without any unnecessary utensils, though spoons can be provided for people who look snooty until they prove that they know how to eat with their hands like everyone else.

Dinner on our first stop on the drive in.

Welcome snack at Djimmi's house

Ultimately, our trip had mixed success. One of our projects didn’t work out like we had hoped, but we learned a lot, and I’m still hopeful for the future.

Biosand filter at the pediatrics ward in the
local Faya hospital--I think this project will work.

Rope pump prototype--this project hasn't worked yet,
but we aren't giving up 

-->

Enjoy the following photos and stories from Faya, the world’s largest oasis town, and one more the most interesting places I’ve had the privilege to visit.

We got several flat tires on our way in and on our way out.
In spite of this, we risked the last 500km without a spare tire.
Life on the edge--and we made it!

Selfies with Herve while everyone else changes tires.

One arm is red and the other is white--
this is what happens when you don't put on sunscreen
and you sit with one arm out the window.
Amanda-merah putih!

The petrol station at Kouba

The store at Kouba. The proprietor goes to Libya
once a month to restock.

This popped up on my Facebook when we hit a signal tower in the middle of the desert and made me laugh.
It would have been a bad time for me to get "sick and tired of sand." I don't mind sand fortunately.

Camels are ALWAYS cool.
Camels wandering alone in the middle of the desert--feast your eyes.

This isn't a photo of litter.
Tires and metal barrels are strategically placed
to mark the road.
Even so, don't go without an experienced driver or
it might not end well for you.

We stopped by every stranded car to see if we could help.
Everyone does it. We often left food or water, if needed.

Oasis rest stop in the middle of no where--they had a nice
tarp strung up, which was nice privacy for the one girl on the trip
who was making sure to stop whenever there were convenient rocks
or scrubby bushes to squat behind, but those were few and far between. 

In Faya! How gorgeous is this?

Every night I let Bila watch movies on my computer.
She doesn't speak French, English, or Arabic.
I learned some Goran to speak to her and her mother,
but I wish I knew enough to understand her animated explanations
of the movie plot to her brothers when they came in later.
What did she think was happening in Cinderella?

Sand dunes!

I took a million photos like these and I can't bring myself to delete
any of them because they are so beautiful.
Though this one has a weird green alien dot on it, so I probably should have deleted it.

This is a very artistic photo, don't you think?
If only I were an Instagram-girl...

Yaqob and Ibrahim decided to nail their shoes onto their
"yortanga" (sand board). I wish I could have been there
when their mother found out...

Djimmi bragging on his son, "He is a great hunter--he can hit any animal with a rock."

Showing us a garden, irrigated by a traditional system.
Djimmi is full of personality.

Oasis Garden

Eating fresh figs right off the tree!

Alah is using my Gerber knife to do some construction.
I always bring it on trips like this because you never know when you might need it.
I generally use it for fixing the gas bottle in my house or re-mounting the towel rack.
Djimmi saw it and said, "Are you KGB? How did you get that? It looks like a took you use
to get information from prisoners." I did accidentally join the Communist party in China,
but that is just a coincidence.

Ready for the trip home.

Digging ourselves out of the sand.
We got stuck in front of a broken down truck.
They lent us their shovel and we gave them some food and water.

Our friends.
I asked them, "How long have you been here?
"27 days," he said, "So not too bad. The next truck
down has been broken for 3 months."
"How are your surviving?"
"People like you give us food and water. We're doing ok."
The ultimate optimist!

I saw this sign when the guys stopped to take a pee break.
Obviously there was no place for me to do that.
But I was fine. I just went to stand by the sign and laugh and laugh.
What is it pointing at? It's in the middle of the desert. Nothing is written on it.
It's not even well secured. It could get blown over and then where is it pointing?
Who thought to put this sign out here?

This is what our car looked like from the sign.

Perspective.

To drive through sand you have to deflate your tires a bit.
We didn't have a pump to re-inflate once the sand got less,
so we stopped these guys and borrowed theirs.
Djibrine said, "Amanda, speak Arabic to them--it will freak them out!"
So I did. I also did this later in the trip when some soldiers
were trying to get us to pay them money for some unnecessary papers that
our driver didn't have for his vehicle. After our conversation,
they agreed to let him go with a warning, "But only because of this nasara girl! Because we like her."
See? It can be useful to have me around.

I climbed on the roof of the car to take this sunset photo.
It wasn't necessary to do that, but I wanted to climb on the roof of the car anyway.
So I did.

The visitor's shelter on the trip home that Herve and I rejected.

Porridge for breakfast anyone?
Pas pour moi.

Cops and Blood Donors

At the police station,
contemplating my role
as Police Liasion

I’ve somehow become the official liaison between the western missionary community (of which I’m not actually a member, by the way) and the N’Djamena police department. This comes thanks to our office neighbor, a cop who actually works for their IT department. Yes, our police force has an IT department, though, in the interest of full disclosure, I don’t think he gets to do much as he would like and he’s looking to set up a side business. If you have any website design needs in N’Djamena, he’s your guy. He studied in India, so you know he knows his stuff.

The Director's Office

Anyway, Mohamed and I went to see Mohamed at the police station after being called up by someone else, likely also named Mohamed, to identify the thieves who had attacked me in some sort of police line up. I told them that I wouldn’t be able to do this, not being someone who pays attention to details and having no memory of the face of the man that I fought with over my wallet for several minutes in close quarters. (I have other skills though—I can swallow a giant bug while running without stopping or slowing my pace and I can whistle really loudly sometimes if I need to get someone to pay attention to me.) I was asked to tell other robbery victims to come with me, but, as usual, though I passed on the information, no one was available. This is possibly because I always get called in last minute, but possibly also because none of them really care that much. I am not desperate for revenge or anything, but I like both of the Mohameds that I know at the police station. They both have gone out of their way to be helpful and try to improve the security situation here in the city. I appreciate that Mohamed the Director of Public Security has increased police presence in foreigner-frequented areas, as I requested, and that he sent 4 trucks full of cops to Naomi’s house after Claire was attacked there, and I called him about it. It’s a powerful thing to have the phone number of the cops. I mean, they didn’t get her stuff back, but they at least made an effort to act like they cared. And really, sometimes that is all that victims of crime need to feel better about what happened.

New license with correct blood type

 Fortunately, on arriving at the police station, I didn’t have to identify any criminals. I just had to drink some sugary tea and watch a hilarious Sudanese music video of a song praising the end of American sanctions against Sudan, which involved an ode to KFC (which they are hoping will be one of the many Western franchises to come to the country to replace Starbox, Subday, Pizza Hot, My Luckly, and so many other creative rip-offs) and some interesting commentary on American presidential choices. Oh, and also, because this is the world we live in, a shout out to the Kardashians. If you speak Arabic, watch it here (if this link works), and you’re welcome. If you don’t, you can still maybe get some of the humor. If you’ve been exposed in the past to the glorious musical tradition of Sudan (I lived with a Sudanese woman who watched Sudanese music festivals non-stop on TV and then hung out with a Sudanese woman who is in a band as well, so I am very familiar with said glorious tradition), you will be greatly entertained. My cop friend and I also discussed various reasons why Chad is now on the Great American Travel Ban list, which sent me on a dark, twisted multi-lingual research path to see if the theories we discussed were available on any other news media outlets (hint: they were, but not in English). All of this happened while we waited for Mohamed the Director to show up. When he did, we had a nice chat, as always, and he handed me a list of criminal incidents against foreigners and asked if I could identify any of the incidents. He said he would send over photos of the alleged thieves, but he hasn’t yet. Maybe they didn’t need the foreigners to identify them after all. It turns out, we aren’t all that indispensable to the ever-turning wheels of the Chadian Justice System.

Claire testing my blood

But I have recently been helpful to the Medical System as a blood donor. Being the charitable kind person that I am, you might assume that I’ve given blood many times, whenever I see one of those Red Cross trucks hanging around. You would be wrong. First, Americans don’t like to take my blood because of all the crazy places where I live. Second, in the crazy places where I live, I don’t really want to let people stick needles in me. But I trust Claire and her people at the Guinebor Hospital, and we recently tested my blood again to find that I am, in fact, O-, the universal donor. We did this test at Claire’s house while we were hanging out. Some girls paint each other’s nails and have pillow fights while eating cookie dough. We chose to do a home blood test kit because the blood test I had done properly at a lab in the US was not good enough for my mother, who insisted that I couldn’t possibly be O- because she and my dad are O+. I don’t know what happened there, but Claire’s test, which involved stabbing me in the finger multiple times with a safety pin, also came out O-.

O- card!

So Saturday morning, I get a call from Claire asking, in the nicest politest British way (though, according to the Buzzfeed “Are You More British or American” Quiz, Claire was horrified to find out that she is, in fact, more American than British), if I would possibly be able to trouble myself to come to the hospital and give blood to a mother who just had a baby and needs a transfusion and none of her family have the same blood type and she knows it is a huge bother but it would be a wonderful help if maybe I could somehow make it there, and so I did.

Then when I got there, she disapproved of my outfit, wrapped my head in a scarf to cover my scandalous hair and we shuffled off to the lab where they tested my blood again. I really REALLY am O-, Mom. What did you do?! (Whatever it was, it must not have been that bad because I have the Stillman nose, their obsession with frugality, and their crippling competitive spirit.)

She is a long-suffering friend.

They also tested me for any blood-transferable diseases (I’m healthy!) and then strapped up my arm and stuck a giant needle in me. I was OK until right near the end when either I announced that I wasn’t feeling good or Claire asked me if I was feeling OK. I don’t have a clear memory because everything started fuzzing out and I was nauseous and spinny-headed. Feeling nauseous is the worst for people who can’t throw up. I can remember throwing up maybe 2 times in the last 25 years. Before that, you’ll have to ask my mom, but she probably doesn’t remember either.  So no one was in danger, but maybe they didn’t know that. I heard Claire saying, “Her hands are freezing!” and I thought that was weird because I couldn’t feel anyone touching my hands. I heard the doctor yelling “Arrête, arrête!” and then someone pointed a fan on me and I realized that I was actually going to pull through. Still, when Claire asked, “Amanda, are you with us?” I said, “No.” Because everyone wants a little drama in their lives sometimes. Fortunately, I got back to normal right before they tried to stick an IV in me. They had the bags out and everything, but I was fine, though one of Claire’s Welsh friends said I was the color of the wall, which was half  blue and half white. I guess neither of those colors is ideal for one’s skin tone.

At any rate, they got 400ml out of me, which was enough for what they needed. Everyone fussed over me for the next hour or so, making me drink coke and lie on the couch and taking my pulse/blood pressure multiple times. I went to visit the blood recipient and her baby, and they were happy. The baby has six fingers on his little hands, so I’m glad I could help his mother so that he grows up with the kind, gentle influence of  mother in his life (who hopefully also knows his correct blood type) and doesn't later feel the need to murder Inigo Montoya’s father or anything like that. He’s very sweet and all the family were there loving on them and a bag of my blood was sitting on the foot of her bed, waiting for the transfusion.

Checking my blood. Guess what? It's O-.

I felt tingly and prickly the rest of the day, but my name is on the list in case of any other blood emergencies (my O- blood is so powerful!), and my new Chadian driver’s license is also ready, with my actual blood type written on it. The old one in my stolen wallet said O+. They must have asked my mom because I’d told them to write O-, but when they called her, she probably said, “Oh bless her heart, she has no idea, ya’ll just write O+” because that is how she talks now that she moved back to Tennessee. Anyway, ya’ll don’t worry about me—unless I get in a car accident chasing down criminals with the police or something because I only know of one other O- donor here and she lives close to the hospital so she gets called in a lot.  And Micaela told me under no circumstances should I give blood again in the next 3 months and also she hinted that maybe I am too delicate to give blood at all, but I think I should have had more than a cup of tea with 3 chocolate biscuits before donating my life’s blood (I got 55% British and 45% American on the quiz, so I’m just going to own it and talk about biscuits and trousers and rubbish bins like the classy person that I am now, thanks to Buzzfeed and the fact that I drink a lot of tea). Cheerio, then, darlings. I’m still alive and replenishing blood to give to others who are less picky than those mad colonists across the pond with their restrictive blood donation regulations. It’s my duty as an O-.

 Photos courtesy of my American friend, la belle Claire:

Prepped for blood-letting

Selfie with the Doc

Selfie before the needle in my arm made it impossible for me to take more selfies

Recovering after telling the Doc that I don't need the IV

Bag of my blood. (I'm "Amada," if you were wondering.)

Proof of my British-ness