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| Got a bit of extra time with these kids, thanks President Deby |
While in the car with my sister on the way to somewhere, probably a covid test, I forgot how to order words in sentences, but context clues still allowed the conversation to flow. Or possibly genetic brain connections for siblings. But in true sibling fashion, Marian decided she wanted to steal the new words that I had so cleverly strung together for her own creative writing, and I knew I had to act fast and use it first. So this is me, several weeks later, after she’s posted multiple times on her blog and instagram, acting not fast at all. And it is relevant because in spite of a 20:00-5:00 city-wide curfew, local bars have started up their loud system sound speakers at 21:00, and it has been annoying me. Nighttime silence is the only good thing about the pandemic. Why are you taking that away from me with your rule breaking? Wear your masks on your chin, and I will not be the busybody saying anything to you about it, as I’m sure you already know that it is supposed to cover your nose (in French it is literally called a nose-hider), but I will call the police on your after-hours party if I weren’t sure that they were already there and 4 drinks in.
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| Weird Mickey Mouse ice cream cones |
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| Recipe from Micah's Disney cookbook |
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| Creative use of available materials, credit: Auntie |
Here is your 2021 update for the 3 people who care (and probably already know): I’m back in Chad. I would once again like to use this moment to advocate for last minute ticket-buying. So far there are only two of us who firmly believe in this system: Leif and me. The rest of you are illogical and/or infrequent travelers. Of course Leif was too last year and it nearly killed him to be stuck in Sweden for almost an entire year. He lives in a beautiful 100 year old red farmhouse on the banks of a picturesque lake in central Sweden, but he is desperate to stay in an always-dusty, cement house with roof rats so we can get stuff done here in Chad. Then he pops over to Sudan to get stuff done there while texting me about a plan we have to get to Somaliland in the near future. I want to be him when I grow up, minus the 17 grandchildren because I just don’t have enough time to make that happen. He bought his ticket to Sudan the day before he left Chad. Once when I was in Sudan, and he was buying me a ticket to Kenya or Uganda or somewhere, he bought it for me the day before I left, and said, “I’m glad you’re not like the other people in the Head Office in Sweden. They always get so worried if they don’t have their ticket in hand before they leave.”
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| Here is Leif fixing my ceiling fan. |
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| Here is a meme my sister sent me with the caption: Amanda buying plane tickets |
Now I have neverthirst Head Office people worrying about my ticket-buying. They do not share Leif’s and my laid-back attitude towards trip planning. This didn’t stop them from adding an extra donor meeting into my America time at the last minute. I did not mind that because the donor is a friend of mine, and also because last minute changes rarely bother me. It did mean that I needed to change my return ticket back to Chad. True to form, I waited until near to last minute. I did send an inquiry to the travel agent who has become my go-to in Chad because I try to buy tickets online and then the internet messes up at a crucial spot and I get annoyed. Mahesh (lovely Indian guy who did not do his part to keep the Indian restaurant open in N’djamena when I was gone on some misguided trips a few years ago and it closed for lack of my business) immediately got back to me and gave me some ticket change options and the change fee. I left it for a few days, and then heard that Chad had decided to close the borders and the airport for one week “renewable” (which is a clause they add in every single decree to allow for open-endedness that gives them an easy flexibility and keeps everyone else on the brink of uncertain insanity). My original return ticket was in that airport closure window, which means that my ticket was canceled by the airline, and I didn’t have to pay a change fee when I rebooked. If I had rebooked before the airport closure, properly in advance like a good time-conscious Westerner, then I would have had to pay the change fee. Procrastination saves money! And now, Chad, please open back up to the Brits--they're really not as dangerous as you might think, and many of them are really nice people and have genuinely put their Africa colonizing (colonising) days behind them. Claire needs to come back, and I really need her to come back too because I miss her and I already ate all the gummy bears I brought with me from America.
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| President Deby thinking about closing the airport indefinitely. |
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| President D probably doesn't know about the Airport Cat who guards the luggage conveyor belt, but the Cat knows that his presence is crucial to the smooth functioning of luggage retrieval. |
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| "Why is the nasara taking pictures of the cat?" "I don't know, maybe she wants to take it home with her." But I told them no because I already have two dogs. |
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| Cat close up |
Anyway, when they opened the airport two weeks later, I was on one of the first flights back. Annoyingly they changed the covid test dates of validity and that meant I had to get another test as the first one was no longer valid, and I had to do some intense searches for 24-hour PCR tests. There is a shortage of those in the US. Why is it such a big country? Finally I found one grâce à une colleague in Alabama who has connections. They charged me $250 and I had to do the test myself. Definitely a rip off. I’m sure I did not stick the thing as deeply into my nose as a professional would have. At any rate, the test was negative and I made it back to Chad where I mostly followed vague and inconsistent government quarantine procedures, but people came to visit me at my house anyway. I busted out a tiny bit early to help Leif get his covid test before he traveled to Sudan. We both continue to defy the odds and remain impossibly healthy. It is our carefree attitude towards life, probably.
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| The kids excited to watch me covid test |
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| $250 for this |
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| $30 for this |
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| Wear your iphone Apple print robe when you go pick up your results. (You may have to zoom in, but it's the cool guy in the hat on the right.) |
It is good to be back. My dogs were so happy to see me and get taken out for walks again. No one else wants to take them because they like to be in charge of where we go. Pika MUST bark ferociously at any dog who looks at her. Joe doesn’t usually pull, but he hasn’t been walking in a while, and I think he’s afraid that every walk will be his last, and so he wants to make sure he sees everything. But he is getting better. Pika is getting a bit less barky because I’m bringing a small spray bottle and that seems to surprise her into silence. She’s been a bit ill lately, and the Chadian vet and I have had fun looking up DIY vet videos on youtube. He said, “You know, my education was mostly about camels and goats and cattle. We never studied dogs. I need to get a smart phone so I can learn more things about dogs.” If anyone know a vet who wants to offer online courses to Chadian vets who want to learn about dogs, let me know. I now know how to say “express the anal sacs” in French so I can translate.
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| Pika stole my butter and ate it. Maybe that's why she is sick? |
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| Just before Christmas, while out walking Joe and Pika, Joe snatched a sneaky chicken I didn't see hiding in the bushes. He has strong hunting instincts. The chicken met a swift violent death in front of her babies. I told bystanders to get the owner so I could pay. Owner came and said it was a very special and precious chicken, but he knows my dogs are usually nice dogs and I can pay him whatever I think is fair. I called a friend for advice, and she told me what to pay but told me to go back to the scene of the crime and bring the body back so we could make use of it. I didn't want to reward Joe for his bad behavior, but I also didn't want to be charged multiple times for one chicken, so I went back to get the body. There we were met by many young men who had nothing to do with the situation. They told the owner that I should have paid 4x the amount that I paid and also made sure that all of the chicken's future children had a college fund. They said it in Arabic, so I also yelled at them in Arabic to butt out. I had had a very long day. They butted out, but the owner, who had previously been happy with the fair amount that I paid him for his chicken, suddenly got a call from his uncle, the REAL owner, who said that when chickens are killed under violent circumstances, there is a 12% increase in payment for their deaths. A quick usage of the calculator app on my phone, showed him that I had already paid him over 12% more than the chicken was worth. Indeed, everyone before the group of irrelevant interested young men had told me that I had been generous. My guard told me to go inside and stop making things worse and he handled the situation. I've not seen the kid again since then. And I had a dead chicken in my fridge for 2 days. Eventually the chicken was prepared and the dogs feasted on the bounty of Joe's successful hunt. I couldn't find a chicken toy in Walmart, so I got the duck toy, hoping to satisfy Joe's interest in poultry with a fake bird. He remains uninterested in the fake bird, but Pika likes it. |
My other dog concern has been the rats in the roof of the house where Leif stays. He didn’t complain (much) about the rats, but we have the regional director coming in a few days and he wants to stay at that house. It’s not a fancy house, but we rent it, and he wants to get our money’s worth. So he will stay there. I suggested a nicer guesthouse, but he didn’t want that. And I know he can take it—while I’m pretty sure that he views Leif’s and my last-minute lifestyle choices and haphazard administrative skills to be recklessly irresponsible, he is a tough Kiwi who lives in Niger, and he can hack it. But we wanted to get rid of the rats anyway. The house owner said he would take care of it, and he sent us a bag of rat poison. Since I believe that is what killed Flip and made Joe very ill, I am paranoid about it. But it seemed our only option. So Danem and I bought some cucumbers (crack for rats here apparently), covered them with rat poison, and Danem climbed up into the roof space and chucked poisoned cucumbers all over like a crazed fairy tale step mother whose mirror just told her she is NOT the fairest of them all. And then we waited. In total 6 poisoned rats fell out the side of the roof over the course of a day or so. I kept Joe inside with Pika and me all night in case more came out while the guards slept and he ate one, got sick and died. Joe hates being inside at night. I used to try to get him to come back in and sleep inside, but whenever I go out to try to call him in, he goes full alert, runs to one corner of the yard and barks loudly. Then he runs to the other corner and barks again. Then he looks at me to tell me that he is just too busy protecting our domain and can’t possibly be bothered to come in right now. Antani says, “Amanda, that is his job as a dog. Let him do his job.” So I do, usually. But I didn’t want him rat poisoned again. He spent the night barking in my face, trying to force me to get up and let him out, but I stayed strong. But I only lasted one night like that. The next night I let him sleep outside. By that time we hadn’t had any more dead rats in several hours, and we’ve not had any more since then. I know at some point we need to go up to the attic to see if there are any bodies remaining, but I’ve not done that yet. Leif said the rats seemed to be gone, so we will hope that our efforts were successful.
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| Danem and the poisoned cucumbers |
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| I knew he would never let me actually do the job, but I like to climb things so I also went up. |
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| I locked Pika and Joe out of the house while we were poisoning rats, and she cried like she was dying, which she would have done if she had eaten rat poison. |
And that’s the news for now. But there should be more soon because I’m representing Emelie’s fiancé in her dowry ceremony on Friday, and I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’ve been told to say nothing but what people tell me to say. And also to bring all the stuff for the ceremony that she has been storing in my house. And I was told to say nothing after I made several jokes about things that I wanted to say, and she laughed kindly before demanding complete silence and my best behavior for the ceremony. I will try. But I did laugh at her when she asked me if I had purple heels to match the dress she is having made for me to wear. No, I definitely do not own any purple shoes.
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| Rosie was not invited to the big kid birthday party at the trampoline park, so we went for coffee-- well, only Marian had coffee, Rosie had hot chocolate and I had tea. And Rosie had Attitude. As she always does. |
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| I only like cooking for people who appreciate it. The bro in law loves these deep fried Indonesian snacks that I always make on New Year (bala-bala). Charis wanted to help. She was unsure if she would like eating them though. |
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| You have to get messy to make these. |
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| We didn't make enough. Once the girls decided that they liked them, they went fast. |
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| Ah, yes, bala-bala in front of a roaring fire... classic picture of homey coziness. |
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| A few days later in a country where the sun shines hot, Joe lurks under the table, waiting for Emelie to get back so that we can start the party already and eat all the food she cooked. |
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| Kadessou is the new Country Director for IAS Chad. Leif is going to retire, meaning that he has more time to run around the world doing even more projects. We have a lot planned. |
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| Joe and Pika watch anxiously for any dropped morsel of food. |
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| Emelie shows off the purple coat IAS Chad office had made for Britt (Leif's wonderful, long-suffering wife). |
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| A camel-skin briefcase for Leif. I think he likes it. |
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| Goodbye from Joe and Pika. Go do something important: Save the whales, get a snack, adopt a puppy. |
