Starting out 2024

This photo has nothing to do with the blog but it is from our visit to Festival Dary,
a Chadian Festival that celebrates Chad. It is a lot of fun if you go on a day where there are no riots.

It’s a new year, and some new year miracles are happening—first, I’m writing this instead of doing some other useless thing. Second, my priority checked bags actually both arrived nearly first off the plane in N’djamena and I got out of the airport before almost anyone else. Manon and Joe were waiting in the car to pick me up. Pika continues to hate car rides unless she knows we are going to buy some goat meat for her dinner. Ziggy was not invited along because she is very mad at Manon for getting another kitten and keeps trying to attack her. Now Zig sleeps with me and stays exclusively in my house. Manon is sad, but those are the consequences for getting a kitten that can walk and chase mice. The consequences of keeping Zig mean she is constantly falling into the dogs’ water bowl and knocking her food all over the kitchen but she is so cute.

Manon's new kitten

Zig is unimpressed by her new neighbor

I’ve already had one visit here in Chad, which I thought was going to be fairly easy and painless. My boss, his son, and 2 new colleagues were coming. Well, the woman colleague’s plane was canceled due to the snow and she couldn’t make it. This was sad to me because I’m almost always the only girl here, and it would have been fun to have another one along. It was also sad because she was bringing me her winter clothes to wear on my trip to Antarctica. Yes—I’m going there next week. 

Excited to eat grilled camel meat

I turn 40 this year, which is an age I always thought was SO OLD as a kid. Probably because when I was a kid, it was en vogue to throw grave yard parties with black balloons and “over the hill” signs for people who turned 40 and we had a lot of those parties for my parents and others of their expat friends. My life did not follow the traditional plan where I am now married with several children who will give my old age purpose and visitors and black balloon parties, but I think I should embrace the things I did end up with—flexibility and freedom to travel. So I have one more continent to visit to “collect them all,” and I’m heading there next week inshallah!

I also get to embrace these 3 things that do not particularly like being embraced.

Anyway, back to this most recent trip…

I picked up the guys and we went to visit projects in Dourbali. Everything went fairly smoothly except that the night we spent in Dourbali we ended up taking a woman to the hospital who was in a minor motorcycle accident. My diagnosis is that she made herself hysterical, but was actually not badly injured at all. It is a good thing I am not a doctor because I have no bedside manner. I let Matt drive her to the hospital because it is the greatest joy of his life to drive in Chad when roads aren’t paved. I ended up driving back to the hospital later that night to pick her up when she was discharged because Matt was already asleep. I got in bed around midnight that night.

BTS of a Matt video in front of a terrible water source.
Good news: a well is being drilled in this village right now!

The next day we visited another village and they insisted on us riding camels and horses into the village as they celebrated. Matt and I rode the horses since we’ve ridden plenty of camels in the past and let the others ride the camels. I’m not a fan of horses much but these ones were fine, except it is awkward to ride astride in a dress. I’m glad to see people happy to have clean water, but I do feel awkward in those types of celebrations. People here get a kick out of it, so I try to have fun with them. 

The presented us with camel milk, which I told Matt to pretend to drink. He did well.
The kid's sign is asking for education for children in the village,
sadly that is not something we do, but I hope that there will be a school in this village someday.

Anyway, all was well. The visit went well. Jeff drove back some of the way until we got to the paved roads and had a great time. I took everyone for pizza back in N’djamena. They’d all done so well eating the Chadian food and enjoying it, so I always reward people with pizza after that trip.

The next day I went to pick up the guys from the hotel to take them to breakfast. Matt and Nathan were there, but Jeff didn’t come. I went inside to find him, knocked on his door and he appeared in his underwear with a miserable look on his face. He had diarrhea and vomiting all night and was still going. I said to rest and I would come back later with meds. Matt, Nathan and I went on to the French bakery for some nice pastries. Then we went to my house to drop off their bags so we could go see the hippos. I called Claire for medical advice, she gave me the names of meds to get and Abiner went off to find the meds. Then I got a call from Jeff. He said, “The police are here and they are wanting to arrest me. I don’t know what to do.” I told him to pass me the phone and had the following conversation:

Me: “The nasara is sick and I left him there to rest. I’m coming back to pay for the rooms. Please leave him alone so he can rest.”

Police: “We know he is sick. We don’t want to cause problems for him, but there is a problem at the hotel. We are arresting everyone. Can you come get him?”

I live 5 minutes away so I hopped in the car and went to get him. 

Probably one of the last times Jeff was smiling in Chad.

I get there and the place is crawling with military, police and tons of people. People are carrying out lamps, sheets, food, mini refrigerators, and it is mass chaos. I go inside and find the nice guy from reception and make sure he is not about to be arrested. He assures me he is fine, but the owner of the property and the Chinese renter (it is the Hotel Hong Kong) are having a spat about the rent and the Chadian owner took the Chinese renter to court over it and they were currently there and fighting it out. So everyone has to leave. Not as bad as I had thought, but I guess if you can’t speak the language and stuff is coming out both ends and police bang on your door you would think that is pretty bad. Jean from reception said, “Do you mind if I get your bill to you later? Everything is a bit unorganized right now.” He was not wrong.

I brought Jeff back to my house where Antani had graciously cleaned my room up nicely for him, but he collapsed on my very uncomfortable small sofa instead and insisted he was fine and didn’t want to move. I brought him a pillow, made him take some meds and drink a sprite and then we went off to go see hippos.

Matt and Nathan were excited to see the hippos, but we made the mistake of putting everyone in the same wooden canoe and we nearly sank while paddling to the little island where the hippos were sleeping. They also didn’t want to go closer because hippos are a little scary. Before we made it to the island, Matt kept trying to get us to go back, but the guys refused, probably because turning around would have tipped the boat for sure. Both Matt and Nathan’s shoes were soaked, which I felt bad about because they were flying out later that night, and it isn’t fun to travel with wet squishy shoes. Matt said the hippos were not worth the boat trip, but we got two canoes to pick us up and the trip back to shore was not bad. Nathan said he enjoyed it anyway. Chad weather came through for us and their shoes were dry by the time we walked back to our truck.

See? They didn't sink!

Then we spent some time buying soccer jerseys for Matt’s other kids and finally we got back to my house to check on Jeff. I noticed he was no longer on the couch, so I went into my bedroom where he was sleeping on my bed. I congratulated him for moving to a more comfortable location. (Really the only people who like to sit on my couch are Joe, Pika and Ziguégué). He said, “I think your couch is like a futon or something because it folded up.”

It is not a futon. He just was too big for it and it collapsed. Fortunately Manon has an extra couch in our storage room and she let me take that while Matt tried to find enough straight nails in our nail jar to fix my old one. I like the new couch better anyway, but I need to buy new cushions for it because my ones are too small.

My new couch will look like this once I get cushions that are the right size.

Jeff skipped our late lunch/early dinner too, but perked up for souvenir shopping before heading to the airport. (Dr Claire saves the day for the neverthirst team again. She says, “I always know to keep my phone by me when you have a neverthirst team here.” And Matt says we need to keep her on retainer. Honestly, she has even helped with medical advice when I’ve been in Niger, Ethiopia, and Uganda even.) Their flight was delayed again, but I think everything else has been ok because I’ve not had any other messages from them. I doubt Jeff will ever want to come again to Chad, and now I need to find another go-to hotel, but otherwise it was a mostly successful trip. I’m happy to say that I think Nathan had a good time, so at least we are passing good memories on to the next generation.

Another recent visitor--cute little CODA.
His hands are blurred because he is trying to sign to me.

Now I’m sitting under my fan in my room typing this and feeling very cold as Pika licks my legs for no reason. I am happy that the warm clothes I ordered on Amazon made it to Debbie’s house so that I can have some warm clothes for Antarctica because if I’m cold in these clothes under the fan, I’m not going to be ok hanging with the penguins without some extras.

Pika is unsure of these chili lemon gummy bears, but I love them.
Thanks to my niece and nephews for the Christmas present.