Dangdut: 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: