Airport Blogging for Claire

Hanging with the ladies--you can't even tell which one is me.

If Claire told me to jump off a cliff, I probably would do it. I mean, she (and Debbie) asked me to bring an envelope with pieces of humans in it to mail to their pathology guy in the States, and I’m doing that. I have a cool letter about it, and they were telling me that if someone gives me a hard time about it, just to leave the envelope, as it’s not worth getting in trouble for. Apparently no one who has done this for them has ever had anyone ask questions, but I hope I get some curious TSA guy with a weak stomach. The perks of being friends with hospital people! (Also, sometimes they give me free meds.) But anyway, Claire said to blog while in the airport, so that is what I’m doing.

Moussa in the background taking photos of me,
and that is why I have so many photos of me in this post.

When you try to take photos of a group of women who are not prepared

Clearing no one but Ashe is paying attention

These last few weeks have flown by, trying to finish up work stuff, entertaining visitors, making short trips to the field, ordering lots of food from the restaurant near my house that delivers because I’ve become friends with the owner and I haven’t had much time to cook these days. I’ve also been invited to several American embassy parties because of Joe, who is currently staying with various Embassy people while I’m gone because they have nice yards and he is irresistible. I’ve also had a few visits from the vet, once after Joe was attacked and bitten by a mean dog in the street and once recently when Joe has been sick with what I think is a cold. A coughy, sneezy, snuffly dog is a sad dog. The vet came late the last visit because he was outside of town vaccinating a bunch of sheep.

Joe sitting inside the gate, the guard putting his hand in to pet him--
I told you he is irresistible!

This is me when I'm sick too. 

Another culture shock moment for Jack-sugar cubes,
"Amanda, what is this? It's like candy! They put it in their tea?"
Apparently sugar cubes are not a thing in Jack's Kenya.

My most recent trip to the field (two days ago, I think, but time is a blur) also involved sheep and camels and goats and herds of cows and that one donkey I almost hit because he would not move out of the road. I headed out to some villages outside of Dourbali to check on a few projects and meet my namesake. She’s called “Amina,” which is my Arabic name. Originally it was my Somali name, but I changed up the pronunciation to use it here. It’s now more widely used than my actual name whenever I am walking with Joe around our neighborhood.

Amina and Amina

Irrelevant to the blog, but I love this guy,
he's been a great supporter of our work,
and he is a wonderful father who adores his daughters,
one of whom is also called Amina, but not after me.

This chubby baby ran up to me and put up his arms, speaking of irresistible!
Kids usually run away from me screaming, so I was pretty excited,
had to commemorate the moment with a selfie, as you can see in my glasses reflection.

I always like to go to the field and spend time with people in the village and hear their stories. I like hanging out with the women, forcing them to let me help with basic tasks that I know I can do (shelling peanuts-yes, making the peanut butter-no), and playing with the babies that aren’t afraid of me. I was happy to meet baby Amina, but I really rushed the trip. Initially, I’d planned to spend the night in Dourbali with Pastor Moussa, which would have given me a whole day to visit 4 projects out in the bush, but I had to get to the Christmas party for IAS staff that evening. I couldn’t leave the day before because I had to take Jack and Emmanuel to the airport at 5am the next day. So I decided to drop Jack and Emmanuel at the airport, meet Nesie at the roundabout near his house, and drive on, beating traffic, which I noted last time is not as bad as Nairobi traffic, but still the probability of accidentally (or on purpose) killing someone on a motorcycle who jumps in front of you at the last moment increases during certain times of the day.

Camel guy thinks we're weird in our car

Guy on a horse thinks we're weird in our car

I really wonder what we are all looking at,
but it's more likely we are all tired of squinting at the sun.

The car I was planning to take arrived in from Abeche late the night before. I had checked in with the driver while he was on the way to ask him to please put petrol in the car THAT NIGHT because the stations aren’t open before 6am and I wanted to leave before 6am. He promised he would, but then I arrived at the office and found out he had forgotten. It was 4:55am at the time. I did not make much of an effort to hide my annoyance. Anyway, at 5:30 while driving to pick up Nesie, consoling myself with the fact that it wasn’t too long to wait for 6am and trying not to think about the fact that this isn’t a country dedicated to on-time store openings, I saw an open petrol station! I was able to fill up the truck and save myself about 15 minutes of time and an entire day of being annoyed with people who did not keep with my plan. Luckily, I had another chance to be annoyed with someone for not doing something I had asked to be done last week at the IAS Christmas party later that night. And again, it ended up ok. It’s nice when that happens. People will often let you down, and it doesn’t always end up with no one getting hurt.

Camel attack at dawn!

And now the sheep, who were likely vaccinated by Joe's vet

Always the cows blocking the road

One of the best parts of my job is seeing the joy and hearing about new life in a community with a new water point. I love the smiles and the stories. I’m humbled by the generosity shown to me, whether it involves naming your seventh child after me or serving me your best food (though I do try to avoid eating goat intestines and termite stew, if it is possible—I had the goat intestines this time).  But it’s hard to get requests for more help like building a school or a health center in the area, knowing that the need is huge, but that’s just not what we do. There are a lot of needs out here, but it’s a privilege to work with Pastor Moussa and others around Chad to identify needs that we can address.

New hand pump is already hard at work

Best part of the job!

It’s also pretty fun driving around, off-roading it—as long as there is no traffic and I’m in the truck. I do not like off-roading it in the corolla and I don’t like driving in town where my competitive instincts resent cars trying to pass me. The truck can connect to my phone (so high tech!), so I can play music, and that is fun. I was entertained by the contrast of the road I was on and the Rend Collective song “My Lighthouse,” which I downloaded to learn for a few weeks ago when I was helping David lead worship for their TEAM conference. I guess Northern Irish musicians will stick together (he had a few Getty songs in the repertoire too), and it was nice of him to invite an American to join him because it’s fun to play with good musicians, and I don’t get to do that very often. Anyway, the Rend Collective people are singing on a boat in the middle of the sea while we were driving through sand, dodging camels—basically the same. The other entertainment was me asking the guide which road to take. When you’re driving in the Sahel, there are scrubby bushes all around, a few trees of differing sizes, and various types of sand, which turn into various types of mud in the rainy season making many roads impassable. You look for the most defined tire tracks and try to follow them, even though most of them are probably from “chariots” (we call them horse carts). People drive wherever they want and you don’t always know which way is the right one. I’ve definitely gotten lost on roads like that so I kept asking the guy which road I should take. He kept saying, “Don’t worry about it! They’re all going the same way!” I believed him, but then when driving out of Moussa’s house later on our way back to N’djamena, I was concentrating on avoid trees and bushes and I wasn’t really paying attention to the direction I was going (because “all roads go to the same place”) and I hear Moussa in the back laughing saying, “Why are you taking the longest possible road out of here?” And then I looked up and realized I had veered a bit off course.  I need the desert equivalent of a lighthouse, I guess. When I finally arrived home, having taken a few other extra-long roads to avoid potholes, there was less than an hour until I was supposed to be at the Christmas Party. That’s when I discovered I’d left my house keys locked in the corolla, and the keys to the corolla were locked in the office, but Emelie came to my rescue.

Following a "chariot" on a very obvious road

IAS Staff Christmas Party

So I made it to the Christmas party and I had just enough cash to pay for everything. Then I packed the truck with several of my colleagues, dropped them all at their homes, and went back to mine where three friends of mine holding an all-night prayer meeting in the empty house in my compound. A few months ago, Pastor Moussa posted a photo on Facebook of a meeting we had with a former minister in Dourbali about the submersible pump project. Some FB friend of his commented along the lines of “I guess you had to wait for the little white girl to come help you” and “You know that if the white people give you anything, you will be in their debt forever.” I saw the comment, and I definitely know where he is coming from. The legacy of “the whites” in Africa is well-known and almost entirely negative. And plenty of “little white girls” have done a lot of damage over the years, and I know that this “little white girl” has made plenty of mistakes. But I can say right now that Pastor Moussa and others here, even just over the last few months, have given me more than I could ever repay. Their support, love, and faithful prayers have been life to me. I’ve often been annoyed that I see Jesus in my mind as a white guy with blue eyes and flowing light brown hair, even knowing how historically inaccurate that is, but years of Sunday School flannel boards and exposure to anachronistic medieval artwork is really hard to undo. But lately I’ve noticed that, while still historically inaccurate, Jesus has Moussa’s joy (and definitely his smile!) and Nadji’s gentle warmth and Gabriel’s fire and Antani’s servant heart and Emelie’s unshakeable faith and Nesie’s passion to help everyone in need who happens to wander into his path from a prostitute living in the street with her newborn baby and who is now living in his house, to his neighbor’s daughter whose school fees he is paying because he believes girls should get an education, to the street boys he buys bread for when they're coming down off their drugs, to the prisoners he visits in jail. I am amazed that I get to be a part of their lives and that because of Jesus, we are Family in the truest sense of the word. And that’s what I told mon petit frère on Moussa’s Facebook. And when I think of how exhausted I am right now and how little sleep I’ve had over the past few nights, I remember that Moussa and Nadji have had even less—because they’ve been awake, praying for me. So in conclusion, support the Africa projects for Neverthirst so I can keep trying to even the score with them because while they did like trying pizza for the first time, I feel like we could do more with a solar pump or two. Bonne fête à vous!

Moussa and Nadji try pizza for the first time,
and then they ate the leftover cold pizza for breakfast the next day!
Pizza initiation complete!
(Note: I also bought them fish, which they enjoyed much more, I think.)

Quick question: should I make an instagram account for Joe?
I'm not on instagram myself because social media is a Job,
but I feel like Joe is ready to become an Influencer.