The Last Part Where the Exciting Stuff Finally Happens

Photo helpfully posted on Facebook previously by Moussa 

Finally the end of the saga, and if you made it this far -- nice work (I know it's you, Mom)! To remind you: we had just bought a new-to-us spare tire, and we were back on the road with another 350km to go at 5pm with an hour left of good daylight and the only good bit of road behind us.

I told you it is pretty out here.

About an hour later, I was braking for potholes or goats or something, when I felt the brake push all the way to the floor. I am not a car person, but on the giant Land Cruiser trucks that I have been driving, when the brakes are working, you push a little on the pedal and feel the catch pretty quickly. In this case, the catch wasn’t there, and I had to push all the way in, like how much you have to push the clutch in before there was any catch (pretty much all the way to the floor, which means Sister Short Legs here is almost standing), and it wasn’t a strong catch. I knew it was probably the back brakes, which we had just had fixed, but likely they hadn’t been fixed as well as we had hoped. A car person gave me his theory as to what happened because it has happened to him before--possibly someone forgot to tighten the thing when he was fixing the other thing and then the thing fell off and didn't do what it was supposed to do. I really appreciated his efforts at the explanation, which actually made sense at the time, but unfortunately all that remains of his attempt to educate me are that the thing wasn't tightened. Anyway, we were in the middle of nowhere. There was nowhere to fix the brakes or re-tighten the un-tightened things. There was nothing to do except convince myself to drive more slowly, which, along with remembering names of car parts, is not one of my stronger skills. I told myself to stay in 4^th or below, but you can go pretty fast in 4^th too. I told Nesie what had happened, and I asked him to pray.

About 20km outside of the last town before N’djamena, it was almost dark and hard to see. It was too light for the headlights to help much but too dark to see very well. I really wanted to get to Massaguet (the last town) by 7:00pm because it was a stupid goal that I had set for myself. From Massaguet there are only 80km left before N’djamena. I was hoping to get home by 8:30, and I remember thinking to myself, if anything happens, it will be way after 8:30 before you make it home, so try to drive carefully!

The aftermath. You can see that I had the lights on, but it's still light-ish out.
At this point everyone was really worried about me, but I was really worried about the chickens.

Clearly I don’t listen to myself because when I swerved to miss some tire-killing potholes I saw at the last moment because it was hard to see, I lost control of the car, it slid across the road and flipped on its side landing in the grass. I remember lying there for a moment listening to Nesie pray and Antani scream my name thinking, “Yeah, we aren’t getting home by 8:30.” And then I told Antani I was OK. And everyone else said they were ok. Two young men walking by who had run for their lives when I lost control of the car and it looked like I was heading for them, ran over to help us. They broke the passenger side window and helped pull us out of the car. That’s when I noticed my dress was ripped and my left shoulder and arm were dripping blood. My right hand was ripped up too, with one nail broken in half. Fortunately, no one else was injured. I did what I always do when I think I might need medical help: I called Claire.

I was pretty upset and not very coherent. We were attracting a crowd. I genuinely had no idea what we should do and how we could get out of there. Claire told me to get to Guinebor Hospital (where she works) if I could and they would help me get stitches (it was clear that I needed them) and clean the wounds, but that was another 100km or so away and we had no transportation. I looked over and found that a crowd of 15 men lined up by the truck and “one-two-three” pushed it back upright! Fortunately I got that on video because say what you want about Chadians, but this is the night before one of the big Muslim holidays, and they’re all dressed up and off to festivities, but they happen upon a tipped over car and they say, “Hey guys, let’s fix this!” They flipped it back over and went on their way like it was no big deal. Then a Chadian military car stopped to check out the situation. They were on their way to Massaguet. The “Captain” (the other guy called him that so I assume that was his rank) told us to get in his car with his driver and he got in our car and they drove us to the “hospital” in Massaguet, dropped us off and then headed on their way to their festivities. The Captain said, “The car works, but the engine seems to be getting really hot so you should probably fix it here if you can.”

My efforts at posting the video of the guys pushing the car back up.

Another effort in case the other one doesn't work. Likely neither one will work.

Meanwhile, I was ushered into the “hospital” by my very concerned passengers (none of whom had even a scratch) who had been traumatised by my stupid driving but were all mostly concerned for me, as I was dripping blood all over the floor. It’s ok because the floor was already covered in mud and bugs. I use quotation marks around the word “hospital” because it was one room with a man in a lab coat, a table with some medicines on it and a few beds pushed around the corners of the room. One light bulb lit the room, and that wasn’t sufficient to see the wounds, so one of the ladies standing around who was presumably a nurse, but could also have just been a friend of the guy in the lab coat, whipped out a nokia phone and held the tiny flashlight over my arm. Another lady helpfully snipped off a chunk of my dress, along with a bit of my hair, so that I could pull my arm out. The doc and another kid in a lab coat start rubbing down my arm with betadine (?), which I think is iodine in English? (Red stuff that burns.) They dug the cotton swabs in my wounds and marveled at my ability to speak Arabic. In between my groans I told them my life story, and they were excited about all my time in the Arab world. Then I noticed the doc grab a large syringe, and I figured things were going to get worse. He poked the needle down into one side of my jagged elbow wound, then twirled it a bit and poked it up out of the other side of the wound, like he was trying to sew it shut. At first I thought he was starting the stitches, and then I realized it was the local anesthetic as he squirted the liquid all over the outside of the wound. Then the young kid in the lab coat popped over and started sewing. I’ve been told that proper procedure is to give the local anesthetic a bit of time to start working before sewing up the wound. Also, I’ve been told that usually it’s given before they start swabbing out the gashes with burning red stuff. And I think that generally when medicine is administered by injection, it is supposed to go inside of the body and not be squirted on the outside, but I'm no medical professional. Anyway, I definitely felt the stitches, but later while I was sitting on one of the beds waiting for Urbain to show up, I noticed that there was a bit of numbness in my arm.  I also noticed that the guy who wrapped the bandages around my stitches did not wear gloves, though the others had, and he also tore strips of tape and gauze with his teeth. I don’t want to blame him for the infection I developed later, but he is on the suspect list.

They have gloves on!

It’s 80km from Massaguet to N’djamena, as I’ve mentioned previously. It took Urbain nearly 2 hours to drive that distance to come pick us up, which is not because the road is terrible (it isn’t great, but it is not terrible), but because he doesn’t drive fast at night (a lesson that some of us should take into account, I realize), and he didn’t crack 60kmph even once. Covid curfew at the time was set at 10pm, but we had a doctor’s note from the doc in the lab coat, clearly the most official person present (so why did they let the kid intern do the stitches?). He wrote a nice note on fancy doctor paper, declaring that I needed an xray ASAP. It is possible that he really believed that. To me, a non-medical person who does not own a lab coat and has been known to use candy as medication and the power of positive thinking to cure headaches, it seemed fairly clear that no xray was needed, but whenever we were called upon to produce that permit to drive after curfew (3-4 times actually), the fact that I hadn’t been given any actual pain medication this whole time and the fact that my dress was covered in blood and blood was soaking through the bandages as well, really sold the medical emergency. It did not spur Urbain to faster driving, which is probably good, though I was pushing the gas pedal for him in my mind.

Don't say I only post photos of me when I look good.

We made it to my house at 1am. Because they wouldn’t have my pained facial expressions to convince police that we were ok to be out after curfew, everyone stayed over at my house that night. The men slept on beds and mattresses in Henry’s house (since Henry is back in Kenya now and Victor was in Dourbali), and Antani slept on a mattress in my house. The next day, everyone headed to their respective homes, and Claire came to pick me up, fill me with drugs, drive me to her hospital (about 20 minutes out of town) to have me checked over by Dr Tom of Guinebor Hospital, bought me lunch and escorted me to an Art Show with Tea put on by the Guinebor Kids (so classy are these multicultural little TCKs), and then drove me home and then went back out to Guinebor. If you have a friend who is that caring, selfless and wonderful, you are pretty blessed, aren’t you? I know I am.

Claire told me that she looks serious in this photo because this is serious business.
She helpfully wrote out everything for me about the meds
because I did not pay attention when she was talking. 

Dr Tom was actually fairly impressed by Kid in a Coat’s stitches, so I felt bad for doubting him. He did say that he should have stitched up the cut at the top of my shoulder though. I don’t blame Kid in a Coat for that—the nokia phone light was just not powerful enough, but that could have been a cause for the infection too. Fortunately, due to double doses of antibiotics from Claire, Pharmacist Extraordinare, that didn’t last long. It maybe lasted a bit longer than it would have since the pain meds made me barf up everything for two days. Claire drove in AGAIN to bring me anti-nausea meds, which I later misplaced, and when I couldn't find them, I immediately assumed that the dogs ate then (which was unfair to them, but they do cause a lot of mayhem and destruction in my house). Later I found them in my bag (where I had put them and promptly forgotten), so it was all good, as I was really worried that the dogs had eaten them, but I would never find out because they wouldn't be able to barf them up--because anti-nausea. Claire is very kind to put up with me. I will say that a convenient thing that happened this year is that I have learned how to throw up. It took me a long time, but it is amazing how much better you feel after. All it took was a year of consistent trauma, pain, and frequent medical issues to help me re-learn a skill I presumably was born with.

Doc Tom and I in our super-cool Chadian facemasks.

A fun thing about being in an accident or in hospital for any reason here, is that people will come to visit you and check in on you. When you are alone, as I am, you are then responsible for dragging yourself out of bed, sitting in a chair and smiling awkwardly while hoping you have something in the cupboard to offer them. Fortunately, I always have cookies, and since I wasn’t eating due to nausea, there were still plenty to offer to my guests.

Céline came by to fix my bandanges.
Yes my house is unorganized and the couch cushions are like that
so that the dogs don't mess them up and the mattress is in there
because Antani slept there and I couldn't move it out with only one functioning arm.

Observe the beauty and order of Claire's house in contrast to mine.
She only has one cat. Also she's better at interior design than I am.
Also I have no interest or abilities in interior design.

Moussa showed up with Victor on Saturday to pick up some supplies and check in on me. He took some videos and photos, which he diligently posted on Facebook on my behalf (thus informing many surprised people who I'd not told that I had been in an accident). He also tried to give away my dogs because he says there are too many. He is right, but I haven’t given any away yet, though I have locked them out of my house a few times. He actually called Emelie and told her to come take the one he calls Kakilé, which I actually decided officially to call Kwach in honor of Henry, though in reality I still call her Puppy even though she's now bigger and fatter than both Flip and York because she is a glutton. Anyway,  Emelie knows me too well and didn't follow orders to pick up her new puppy. She does want Kakilé/Kwach/Puppiko (that's what she calls her) though, and I'll probably cave and give her the dog, but right now Antani's kids and myself love her too much.

How can I give up this puppy who so graciously steals my laundry
off the drying rack and then wears my bra around her neck because she knows it makes her look good?

Moussa was so proud to help Nadji cut the bandages for me.

Nadji and Céline (both nurses from Guinebor and friends of mine) came in alternate days to change my bandages. Nadji insisted on doing it even when I thought it could wait because he was worried about the infection.

Gross photo also courtesy of Moussa

And finally the end to the saga: Céline took the stitches out. She invited me over to her house for lunch and stitches removal (Claire was invited too). Lénaëlle (Céline’s daughter) put on a “spectacle” (the Guinebor kids are artists and performers for sure) and decorated the table with flowers in honor of our visit. Stitches came out fairly easily. I do not have to drive out over the bumpy dirt road to Guinebor for a while, though I can now because I have a big truck. And I did the next weekend to make cinnamon rolls with Claire. I had to learn the trick of turning the key, warming up the car system (turn key to light up dash but not start engine, then wait until the squiggle on the dash goes out), and get the horn fixed (I cannot drive in Chad without a horn), and fix the windshield wipers because it’s rainy season. I also learned that in order for the driver’s side door to stay shut while you’re driving, you must lock it (see the last post when I nearly took out a motorcycle driver when my door swung open while I was driving). Anyway, all’s well that ends well. And I’ll be off on another trip soon, and this time I will drive a bit slower. And bring more food. And leave as early as possible. And refuse to run any more errands for passengers. And make sure the brakes are working.

Stitches are out grâce à Céline and flowers in my braids are grâce à Lénaëlle.

And I was back later that week to make cinnamon rolls with Claire!
While they were baking we took many timed geography quizzes online
 because we are nerds who know how to have a good time.

They turned out well, don't you think?
Not pictured: cream cheese icing

Oh-and one important thing I forgot to mention: the chickens survived the crash! And then somehow they survived the night in my compound full of dogs--they are truly impressive creatures that will probably taste really good when Antani cooks them up.

  

This is not a photo of the chickens that survived,
but this is a photo I took on a previous trip to Bitkine
when we stopped to buy some chickens to bring back to N'djamena.
Clearly chickens here are tough birds.

Happenings 2

Back when it was still beautiful

Back to the trip: we finished two reports in Mangalmé, which is a fascinating little town, home to the minister of roads and transportation who dedicated himself to paving the roads in his little village. There are actual stop signs that I feel compelled to stop at because they are in logical places where you would stop to check if any traffic was coming. While in town, most of the traffic that I saw was the kind that eats grass and pulls carts and does not respect stop signs but there were a few beaten down old lorries that also did not respect stop signs. If you are wondering, I can think of 2 stop signs in N’djamena that I pass by regularly—one that is in the middle of a road on the way to my office, which if you stopped at it, you would definitely be rear-ended by a motorcycle. The other is on the way to Modern Market, also in the middle of a road, just after you get out of a roundabout, and again, no one ever stops there EVER even me when the driver’s side door of the rickety old truck I was driving last week popped open while I was on my way to buy groceries to take out to Claire in partial repayment for her being an amazing friend to me all the time. No, I managed to quickly jerk the steering wheel to the correct side of the road while grabbing the shifter with my right hand and down-shifting, as I caught the door with my left hand and tried to slam it shut while still driving and not hitting a motorcycle that was trying to pass me on the wrong side. I realized that the door was not shutting unless I locked it, so I slammed it again and jammed it down with my elbow, which hurt because I still had stitches in it at the time. But it worked! And now I know that when I drive that truck, which also struggles with many other issues, locking the door is key.

I felt compelled to stop at the stop sign.
I'm pretty sure the chill dudes on the side of the road would have been
unbothered if I hadn't adhered to international traffic rules though.

And back to Mangalmé-but actually we are done there. We dropped off Job’s kids, had lunch and then booked it back to Mongo, stopping on the way to do another report (3 out of 4). The wind and clouds of the impending storm made for some dramatic photos, most of which Nesie took because I was busy playing with a group of kids who were hanging around. They kept sneaking up towards us and when I would turn around, they would run away screaming. Then I kept hiding and jumping out at them because it was more fun that watching Nesie slowly type up the report, but they thought it was really funny, so soon Nesie was doing all of the reporting while surrounded by a crowd of laughing, shrieking children.  We finished JUST before the rains (ok fine, Nesie did), and we carried a few old people in our car back down to their houses so they could get home without getting soaked. When we got to the place where we were staying, it was pouring so hard we couldn’t get the guard’s attention, so we just sat in the car for about 45 minutes waiting for the rain to slow down. Fortunately, I’d bought some Pringles and sodas and a chocolate Swiss roll cake at the petrol station where we’d filled up with diesel in preparation for our trip back the next day so we had sustenance. This was all we ate that night because even after we finally got the attention of the guard and got into the house, it rained ALL night and we couldn’t get back out to buy anything to eat. Job and Nesie were super cool about this, something I’ve noticed almost everywhere I’ve worked in Africa: sometimes you have to skip a meal, but people take it in stride. The only times I’ve skipped meals when traveling with Westerners has been when we’ve been stuffed with food multiple times already for days and we are just full. Usually they have a few (roughly 25 each of all possible flavors) protein bars stuffed away in their backpacks, so they survive easily. We carefully divided up the chocolate Swiss roll cake (the Pringles having been demolished earlier in the truck while waiting for the guard to open the gate) and drank some tea and coffee that was provided in the guest house where we were staying. After I worked on the application on my computer for a bit, we watched the first episode of the Chosen, which I’d downloaded months earlier after 15 people recommended it to me but never managed to convince myself to watch. I probably would never have watched it except that I knew that Job and Nesie would enjoy it, and I thought it was like a new version of the Jesus Film so I wouldn’t have to be translating the whole time. I was wrong and I did have to translate the whole time, but they still enjoyed it. Anyway, the last time I stayed in that guest house, I was with Emelie and we watched movies I had to translate for her, and then I let her read Pride and Prejudice on my phone in French (she was a fan!). So I guess that’s just what I do in the Mongo Guest house.

Playing games with kids

Peaking over the wall

Pretty fun crowd

Car snacks, but before the rain. Actually this was maybe the previous day.
Anyway, it sets the mood.

The next morning we got up early and were frustrated that we couldn’t get ahold of the pastor that we were trying to meet up with, so we decided just to drive out to where we might get better reception. Fortunately, we passed him on the road on his way looking for us. That was probably the most fortunate we were all day, but it was a nice moment.

A solar powered pump that IAS installed nearly 10 years ago,
still in use!

The drive out to the last village was mostly off-road, and as it had rained for hours the day before our visit, the road was a mud-hole. Four-wheel drive engaged in the Land cruiser truck I was driving made the whole car sound like it was about to collapse into pieces. So I just kept the car in low gear and powered through. We made it to the village without getting stuck!

On our way out, we passed an IAS foot pump installed nearly 10 years ago-
also, still in use.

Non-muddy part of the "road"

At the village, we found that they were having a wedding. We arrived as the parade of people carrying household goods to the new bride and groom (a bed frame, pots and pans, woven mats) was disappearing into the compound where the celebration was going to be had.  This concerned me because I wanted to get in, do the report, and get out and drive 500km back to N’djamena and reach home before dark. I had the best of plans prepared! But our reports need interviews with women, who were all occupied with wedding festivities and a photo with as many community members as would like to be in it (usually a lot). So after meeting with the village chief and explaining the situation, we went down to the water point (a bit outside the village and down a small hill—farther away than most people wanted, but in this region where you can find water is where you drill and that is usually at the bottom of the hill, and not at the top). Nesie started doing the basic reporting while I became chauffeur to the stars—shuttling women and children from the wedding prep to come be in the photos and back. They were so excited this! And I am happy to report that it did not hurt the wedding prep at all, and people got to ride in a car, which they thought was very exciting. I impressed them all by learning 3 words in their language, which shows that they are probably way too easily impressed and also how much people appreciate any effort at all in learning about their culture. I wonder how impressed they would be if they heard that now I can only remember one of those three words? (I’m really not that impressive.) I had fun laughing and chatting with the ladies (in Arabic, which they also understood-most have never been to school and are illiterate, but they are bilingual and strong enough to carry 50L of water up a hill, so I think they're pretty impressive), and we got the report done. Then we spent 15 minutes convincing the people that we really couldn’t stay for the wedding, and we couldn’t stay to eat because I had people waiting for me in Bitkine.

Coming down the hill with the ladies. 

We made it out of the village and back to Mongo at the time when I had been planning to be in Bitkine, but Bitkine is only 50km from Mongo, so I was still feeling pretty good about how we were on time. We had to fill up the truck with diesel and buy some snacks. Nesie also had some errands.

Job looking good while the storm rolls in behind him

Here’s a story about Nesie: Nesie had some land in the outskirts of N’djamena. He bought the land. He had the papers. When he went there to start working, he found that other people had built houses on it. They told him it was their land. His friends and family told him to take them to court and Nesie would win. This is the logical thing to do when someone steals from you. Nesie took the radical Jesus-way. He went to the thieves and told them, “You can keep this. My God owns all the land.  He can give me anything He wants, better land than this and even free. I will trust in God.” His friends were shocked. His wife was annoyed. The thieves likely congratulated themselves on their easy win. Fast forward a few years and Nesie had the opportunity to buy about 12 hectares of land (29.6 acres) for almost nothing. It’s good land for farming. There is water nearby and it isn’t far from the road. The land is good and clean and better than the land he had before. He said, “Look what God did! I want to use this land to start a farm so that I can support my family and Chadian church workers who don’t have enough money from the church. I want to bring boys living on the streets in N’djamena doing drugs and get them out here in fresh air, teach them how to plant a garden, give them education and love and a home when most of them have been kicked out of everywhere else. I want to bring in prostitutes who want to leave the life and give them a new chance to start over in a safe place. I want to use this land to bless the most vulnerable people, and share the love of Jesus with them.” It’s important to note that Nesie is already doing this in his life right now—his faith in the Lord never wavered and he started following his dream to help the least even before he had the land. A former prostitute and her baby live with him and his family. Every week he meets with street kids to give them food and water and love on them. Just a thought: it's easy to say you'll do something for others when you get that high-paying job or that new, bigger house. Sometimes people do actually do what they say they will when that happens, but you can usually be sure that people who make a habit of loving and serving others before they have anything are going to continue doing that even more once they have more to give. Anyway, I'm sure of Nesie.

How the ladies of the villages here fetch water

And so when Nesie wanted to stop in Mongo to buy peanuts to plant in the garden, I took a detour and lost 20 minutes. Then before Bitkine we stopped at market day to try to find some cassava roots to plant and lost 30 minutes. At this point, I was losing patience, but still agreed to take a friend of Job’s the remaining 20km or so to Bitkine. And when we got to Bitkine, Antani, who I’d told to be ready to leave at 12, was ready to leave at 1 (I don’t mean she was late—I was late. She was ready at 1 when we got there). And we loaded up into the car and took off. Naturally, as I’ve mentioned a few times in past blogs, we brought a box with a couple of live chickens in it (I can never leave Bitkine without chickens in the car with me). Last time I’d transported chickens (from Dourbali to N’djamena) they hadn’t been properly secured, and they were unfortunately crushed by a sack of rice when I went over a bumpy stretch of road and I felt terrible. We made sure that the chickens were properly secured.

A beautiful lady who graciously let us interview her for our report.

Then it was my turn to make a few stops to take some videos for Neverthirst because the mountains are SO COOL in this particular spot and I always have to take a photo there. But it was a quick stop and then back in the car! The road was smooth so we could drive pretty fast and I may have hit 140kmph (I’m not putting that in miles because Mom) a few times, but I was the only one on the road, so it was ok. I don’t think I was at 140kmph when our tire blew out, and I know it didn’t blow out because of the road, which was lovely and smooth at that part. Fortunately, I kept control of the car, drove us off to the side of the road, and we all piled out.

It's so pretty out here!

Nesie and I jumped into action, digging out the jack and the other tools you need to change a tire, whose names I can’t remember in English. The tire was old and patched already and nothing would have saved it. But we had a nice new spare that I’d bought for the trip, so Nesie heaved that out of the back of the truck while I started loosening the bolts of the flat. Then Nesie crawled under the truck to find a place to put the jack. He was sweating and covered in dirt by the time we realized that the jack at full extension was still too short to get the car up where we needed it. We searched for rocks and were able to get it up enough to get the old tire off, but we had to dig a hole to get the new, fully-inflated tire on. And by the time we finished, we’d lost an hour.

WHY? The road is so smooth!

Definitely flat

It is not the better part of wisdom to drive anywhere in Chad without a spare tire, and we knew the road ahead got worse and worse before it got better. OK, really it never gets better. The best part was already behind us. So we stopped 100km down the road in Bokoro, the next “big” town to repair the tire. But it was impossible to repair. We had to buy a new (to us-it was secondhand) tire. Then after we found the right tire (that took a while) and haggled down the price (and that took a while), Nesie heard a leak in the tire. So they had to take the inner tube out and pour water and try to find the leak, and they couldn’t find it for a long time and that took a while. We lost another hour and a half in Bokoro, and at that point I was very tired and cranky. I hate driving at night here because people blind you with their lights and you can’t see very well because there are no street lights, and the roads are terrible, and it was just bad. We’d barely eaten anything since lunch the previous day at Job’s house in Mangalmé, and I had no appetite, but I also knew I should eat. I also knew there was nowhere else we could really stop before N’djamena. We had to make it home or else. So we got in the car and kept driving.

Team work
And if you were wondering how we dug a hole
so that we could get the new tire on--we chiseled it with a hammer.

I'll probably post the rest of the story later, but these posts do get oppressively long sometimes. If you made it this far, good job! Sorry I don't have a prize for you, but I do promise to show you a good time if you ever come visit me in Africa, so that's something.

Weeks of Happenings, Part One of However Many Parts I Decide to Make This

Ready to road-trip

Sometimes I sit around the office, writing, reading and doing emails and wasting time on the internet before going home to a pack of dogs that I really need to do something about (I have too many!), and chatting to friends and family on whatsapp/messenger while entertaining myself in various ways before finally falling asleep early so that I can wake up early and run before the streets are too crowded. It’s not usually very interesting to write about, so I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be too interesting to read about either, so I try not to bore people with that stuff. Other times, I get to travel around or do various projects that let me leave the office or just experience regular life but with a nice twist that I think is unique to where I am. Then, if I can have fun writing about it, I hope that someone (hi Mom!) will enjoy reading about it.

I don’t always have those types of experiences, and that’s why they are noteworthy. I think life for most people settles into a routine or monotony sometimes and nothing seems exceptional, though to others not living your routine it might be. Those times I don’t feel the urge to write, and also, it’s been a tough year for me, so some things I might have written about had I been in a better place, I don’t write about because I don’t have the energy to enjoy them as I have in the past. And after that long, mostly unnecessary introduction, I will say that I’ve had a pretty eventful few weeks here—not always pleasant events, but definitely interesting ones. Events you have to recover from usually count as interesting, and if stitches are involved…well, there will be A LOT of medical consultations happening, but maybe that is because 50% of the people I hang out with here are in the medical field, and they insist upon it? Anyway, a few weeks ago I hopped in the car to drive 700km or so to do some reports. It happens to be one of my favorite places in Chad, and in the rainy season, it’s green and beautiful and I took a lot of photos.  I wrote down the events of the whole trip, but I don't know how to tell a short story, and it is oppressively long. So I've chopped it up into smaller pieces, and I'll share them over the next few weeks if the internet works. This first post will be about the beginning of the trip, and it is mostly an excuse to show off beautiful places around C had, a country that is not known for its beauty because not enough people know where or when to look for it.  

I wish the kid were not cut out of this photo...

 I started off the trip badly. I’d heard that in the direction where we were traveling, there had been some hijackings of vehicles. In the direction where we were traveling, but further on than we were planning to go. Still, I thought it might be prudent to leave my computer at home, and I thought I would send a message to the IAS Regional Director to let him know what I wouldn’t be in contact about the application we were working on that week. But it freaked him out and he contacted all the people with various stakes in my well-being, and they all freaked out and I had to download a map and use my impressive photoshop skills to draw where the attacks have been and where we are going, and then I had to complete a risk assessment, and then they all calmed down, and I brought my computer anyway.

Enlarged to show details: We traveled the green road. Red dot is hijacking area.
You can see Mongo and Mangalmé and Bitkine too if you look closer.

When I finally convinced everyone and finally left, I brought along Antani, who is my house helper and dear friend, along with her two nieces because the halfway point of my trip is her hometown, and she wanted to visit her mother. Her nieces were going to stay and visit their family for a while, and she wanted to bring her uncle home with us so he could go to the hospital in N’djamena for an eye problem he has been having. The trip was mostly uneventful, but the girls were miserably carsick the whole way. The road is paved for 900km across the country to another town called Abéché. We were only going to Mangalmé, which was 666km from N’djamena according to the sign. I don’t think that number was a bad omen because most of the trip was really good, but we did have the devil of a trip home (haha). There are various parts of the road that are riddled with jagged potholes. Tire-killing holes of death. It’s like a game with me to see how many I can avoid. I alternate between being really good at it, and somehow hitting every one in a row, so you can imagine how someone prone to carsickness would struggle. But really—swerving to miss holes gives you motion sickness, bouncing through holes ALSO gives you motion sickness. There was no good option for those girls. As soon as we arrived in Bitkine (their hometown), they were out of the car and said they would not be getting back in anytime soon. I was glad they didn’t have to return with us. They were glad too. Gladder now after what happened. Anyway…

This is the seat I sat in for many many hours.
It was not comfortable.

Stopped to get soda in Bokoro (it's on the map).
That's Antani smiling behind me-the girls were outside puking.

We dropped off Antani and the girls in Bitkine and picked up Job, who is one of my favorite people in the world—lover of Jesus and everyone, servant of Jesus and everyone, always smiling. He and Moussa have similar lovable personalities and are great friends. They met up once by accident in the IAS office in N’djamena and I always describe it as “an explosion of joy.” Their backgrounds and tribes are completely different, but both speak about 10 languages (each, not cumulative) that they’ve learned to be able to share the Good News with people in their own tongue, and both of them are passionate about helping those in need around them. And of course, both of them are always smiling, in spite of the difficult things they’ve gone through in their lives. I’m hoping that will rub off on me some day because I haven’t always been able to keep that joy this past year.

Job with one of the village chiefs

Antani's neighbor kids coming to watch the unloading.

The whole trip Nesie kept marveling at the beauty of the Guera Region (which is where Bitkine, Mongo, and Mangalmé are located, towns that I will talk about a lot in this post like you actually know where they are—my dad will look them up online and enjoy gazing at some nice maps, and you can too!), and I kept trying to get him to get photos we can use for social media posts. The Guera Region is a rocky mountainous area that is extremely difficult to drill in—and very expensive. Almost no one wants to do water projects in the area because it is so difficult. IAS has done the most of any NGO that I know of. But this trip we were reporting on 4 bore holes that had broken down, which Job and his organization had rehabilitated.

More unloading

Cracked windshield photo by Nesie of our fellow travelers on the Chadian  highway.

Everything went relatively smoothly for the reporting—the first two locations were outside of Mangalmé, not far from where Job lives with his family. He has 6 children and one niece who has lived with him since she was a child and her parents died. He said, “She’s really like one of my own children.” He has an adorable chubby baby who is thoroughly spoiled by everyone in the household from dad and mom to each sibling who all dote on her and bow to her every whim. I am the first nasara she has seen, and she allowed me to love her too. She was not terrified by me at all, unlike Repent’s youngest daughter in Uganda who can’t stand the sight of me. The older kids who aren’t in school (thanks, Covid) wanted to come along with us to the villages, and I said, “Hop in!”

With two of Job's daughters

Habiba is rocking my sunglasses. Incidentally, I don't think they made it through the accident.
I can't find them.

She is too cool for school.

Job's kids coming on an adventure!

I let the oldest boy shift gears in the truck for me, and he LOVED it.  I had remembered Aunt Jenny Townsend used to let Zach and Jarod do that for her when we were all growing up in Bandung, and I thought she was so cool for doing that and my mom was so not cool for not letting me. But gender stereotypes aside, Zach and Jarod were probably more naturally inclined to catch on quickly to the shifting, and I would have been distracted by changing the music in the car or trying to convince my mom that the air conditioning was too cold. And I’ve met so many American soldier boys out here who never learned to drive stick before coming to Chad, and I am shocked that we let people like that try to protect our great nation, but most of them seemed to catch on fairly quickly because they had no choice. Fortunately, Chad is great for learning stick—if you stall out in the road, people will honk at you and then go around you. They won’t line up behind you patiently, watching and judging you as you try to move your car like people would in the West (come on, you know you would). Of course you can also be a hybrid like me, who drives around someone while judging them and giving them annoyed looks as you pass by.

I will finish off this section with a few more photos of the beautiful Guera and the people who live there:

This is the village we visited the next day, but I got mixed up putting photos on,
and it's pretty, so it's staying.

Grace and Habiba in Portrait Mode,
thanks to the neverthirst social media team,
I now know that Portrait Mode exists.

Chief on his land

The lovely Hawa, who really wanted me to take her photo.
She kept saying how wonderful it is that their pump has been fixed.

I love all the colors, the strange rocky hills, and the current greenery all over.

Giving the Chief a ride, while Job's adorable kids sit in the back.