InstaTravels

A common sight, if you live in Chad. Or if you're Amish.

“It’s close,” he told us, “only 300km.”

“So why don’t we go and come back in one day?” asked Hervé who was graciously coming in during his vacation month, hoping to keep this trip short (don’t feel too sorry for him—he often comes in while he is on “vacation” because we have sometimes-functioning internet and AC and no children).

“Oh no,” said Djibrine, “It will take us at least 7 hours to get there.”

Now, if we were talking about driving somewhere in South Sudan, absolutely I would believe him. It’s taken me 12 hours to go 200km before. But Chad has a lot of paved roads, and it hasn’t yet gotten to be full on rainy season where soupy roads and newly-flowing rivers can delay traveling, usually because some idiot thinks he is going to be the one to successfully drive through the wadi, even though clearly, two other trucks tried and failed before him.

Example from another trip of someone
thinking his car is stronger than mud

 I offered a compromise: we plan to stay the night but if we make it in time to finish our work and get back in one day, then we come on home. This was acceptable to all involved, so the next day, with my expired but mostly-unnecessary-anyway travel permit, we embarked on our journey of 300km?  7 hours?

Of course, I pushed our ETD to 8am from 6am because, 8am is always better than 6am. Djibrine said he’d come by at 7:30 because for some reason, he was super-stressed about this 300km/7 hour trip. I was not. I told him to err on the side of 8am because I planned to run before we left, and I wanted to make sure I had enough daylight hours to do that because I’ve learned my lesson about running in the dark in certain places. There are limitations that one has to accept if one is a woman who does not own any pepper spray. As it turned out, I was able to run and be ready by 7am, so I texted Djibrine to come on over. Naturally, he turned up at 8:15. The best laid plans…he blamed his wife for not waking him up in time. He has two wives, though, so I don’t know how he ever gets any sleep.

 I like road trips. The only times I prefer to fly are when I have time constraints or when the alternative was the Mundri Distress. Ours started off great, albeit with a bit of a delay. We headed to the petrol station to fill up before the trip and bought some water, even though poor Djibrine was fasting and couldn’t partake. He insisted that we did though, and since Hervé was driving, we made sure he was well hydrated, while Djibrine went back to sleep in the backseat and I tried to take instagram videos for Neverthirst. I was soon called out for one of my dumb jokes on the instagram page, which is why I should not be trusted with social media, but since everyone has editing rights, they were able to re-serious the account.

This is an example of what it looks like to drive down the roads in South Sudan during rainy season,
except we don't need to use those cowardly giant cars.
We are brave enough to take these roads in decades-old Land Cruisers.
Monster trucks are for sissies.

Puttering along, we came to our first péage exiting N’Djamena. We’d been on the road for about 15 minutes at that point. We had just whipped out the 500CFA to pay the guy, when a motorcycle pulled up by our car. It was the man from the petrol station. We’d forgotten to pay him and he chased us down. Oops. Fortunately, he did not seem to harbor any ill-will towards us for that.

Trees full of birds

The trip was fairly typical for Chad—the first part of the trip started out nice and paved with jarring sections of potholes to make sure you don’t fall asleep. Throughout there are military checkpoints where you are either stopped and questioned and must present valid papers (that you write yourself before you leave) or the kindly soldiers might just wave you through. The likelihood of you being stopped increases if the weather is nice and you are female. If it’s hot and stopping your car means moving out of the shade, you will likely just be waved through.  Being a female only benefits if you need to be charming because your papers aren’t exactly up to date. Fortunately, Ramadan fasting was on our side, everyone was conserving energy, and no one really cared about our papers on our trip, so I didn’t have to be charming at all. It's easier for me to remain in my natural state.

Cow crossing.

Throughout the trip, I was supposed to be trying to do something called “Insta Stories” for our Neverthirst social media. Or it might have another official name, but as an elderly person, I’ve not gotten into Instagram on my own, being quite content with the limitations of Facebook, so I’m not super up on all the Insta-Stuff. I did have a quick lesson with Brandon on how to Insta Story, but in the real life of the field, it turns out that Chadian cell phone data options do not favor Insta-Anything. But I was already caught up in taking short videos of cool things we see here that you don’t see elsewhere—camel trains, market day, people in traditional clothes working in the fields or walking by the road, donkeys pulling carts, cows pulling plows, grass-roofed mud brick houses, trees full of white birds, and the general beauty of rainy season Chad. Of course the problem is that once you see something while you’re speeding down the road, you’ve usually missed your opportunity to film it. I’m not dedicated enough to the media to go back for the shots. Consequently, I ended up with lots of dumb videos, which I diligently posted to Instagram before being gently told later not to do that anymore. Sorry Insta-people! I feel this need to share photos and stories of people and places I’ve seen with others who haven’t had the same opportunities I’ve had, whether you want me to or not. Thus—this blog. I’ve done my duty, and no one is making you read this (except, Mom, you have to because it is your maternal obligation).

 My favorite part of the trip is always once we leave the paved road. That’s when the real adventure starts. In our case, we missed the road we were supposed to take several times. And by the time we got to that road, we’d already realized that this trip was neither 300km nor 7 hours. And it wasn’t entirely due to our not knowing the road.

We took a decent unpaved road to a town called Koudalwa. There we met with the chef du village and I told Djibrine that this better not be the place he wanted us to build a well because there were already several water points. Note: this was already 8 hours in and more than 400km. “No, no, this isn’t the place. We just wanted to talk to the chef. Now we will go on out to Badel.” Amanda: “And let’s go now because we are running out of daylight!”

This part of the trip was on much worse roads (still nothing on par with South Sudan), and we splashed through puddles and scraped against trees, smashing our way into the jungle (which is what the bush becomes during the rainy season). On the way we passed several villages and maybe 2 working water points. I particularly enjoyed driving by some villagers loading up a truck with piles of cotton.

“We have to stop!” I yelled, suddenly unconcerned about lack of daylight and my job. “I have to jump in the cotton!” Like most of my ideas, it was a brilliant one. Cotton is bouncy and soft, like what you imagine walking on a cloud would feel like until Science ruins your fun with Facts. Also entertaining, the men on the truck burst into song and dance for us, just because they are fun people. Caught up in the excitement of the moment, our security guard decides to shoot off his gun loudly, right in my ear. But even this annoyance and mild concern about gravitational pull on bullets could not keep me from joining in the fun—until Hervé yelled at me to get back in the car. But I really want to go back and put a well in that village too, so donate to Neverthirst already and tell them to use the money for wells in Chad. Do it now.

If you could see this photo Djibrine took of me
in the "LIVE" version that somehow shows up on my phone,
you can tell that I'm jumping and my hair is flying around,
and that kid is questioning my sanity, as one does.

Climbing out of the cotton pile-
it's up to my knees!

The men singing on top of the truck, with our trigger-happy soldier guy,
aka Monsieur Fastest Hands South of N'djamena, in blue in the front.
Hervé does not drive calmly and Monsieur Celebratory Bullets Rarely Kill People Right in Front of You
managed to hold on, while I amused everyone else in the car by checking to make sure he was still
there, every time we went over a particularly jarring bump.

We finally arrived at our destination about 30 minutes before sunset, significant because it’s Ramadan and people are breaking fast at sunset. People have been fasting from water and food all day. They are tired and ready to eat. But they graciously took me to their closest water point, which is not really in use much right now, as rains have brought green but not refilled the reservoirs. People in Badel go to holes dug in the riverbed and get water from there. Since the holes in the riverbed closest to them are now mostly dry, they are going another 5km beyond to find water.

Hawa shows us the proper way to get water.
Also, clearly this is not good water.
This is what they are drinking.
Go donate to Neverthirst.

The group with me agreed to pull up some water from the hole to show me the quality. At first there were only men with us, and a man gamely tried to get the water. I have a video of us all laughing at him as he dropped the bucket. A woman came out (presumably from the confines of the kitchen where she was putting the finishing touches on the Iftar meal) and showed him how to do it. It just proves the old adage, anything boys can do girls can do better. Or in this case the boy couldn’t actually do it and we had to call in a superior talent.

The water was predictably terrible and the people were predictably quite excited about the coming of an improved water source right in their village. We had a meeting about requirements and expectations, and then it was time to Iftar. Hervé and I sat by the car while everyone prayed and ate. I was a little surprised, but not upset that we didn’t get invited to join in the food. As soon as everyone finished, we got back in the car to head to the first bigger village where we were going to spend the night in the chef’s house.

We made it back, driving in the dark, stopping to wipe mud off the windscreen once or twice and checking to make sure that one tire was holding up (it barely made it). At the chef’s house we were offered a Ramadan meal and then laid down on the floor to sleep. I was also a bit surprised to be sleeping with the men, but at no point during this trip was I considered a proper female, so I guess it shouldn’t have been that surprising.

Iftar meal in Chad. Got to be honest, it is not my favorite.
I've never liked soup much because I prefer to chew food.
People always seem to want to break fast with soups here, though.
And giant spoons are for communal soup consumption.

 It wasn’t a super restful night, though, what with Hervé’s intense snoring and the 3am wake up call for pre-daylight eating. I was very impressed with how quickly Hervé fell asleep. Seriously, I always thought those people who lie down and are out right away are lying, but it seems like that is what happened with him. I mean, there was really no reason for pretend snoring in this situation, so I have to believe it must have been real. I ended up just getting up at 4am and then pushing everyone else to get up so we could leave by 5am. 

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Anyway, we made it home in time for me to join the ladies celebrating Minga’s birthday and watching Wonder Woman in the theatre here—made even better because we can openly bring in a large pan of brownies for movie-snack time. Chad is Freedom. Don’t you want to come visit?

On the way back, Hervé always stops to buy presents for his family.
He made me try this weird palm tree fruit.
It tastes like if you shredded some cardboard and mixed in a few raisins for flavor, with
the texture of those woodchips you put on the bottom of a hamster cage.
Djibrine is either concerned for me or wishing he weren't fasting so that he could eat one too.

Here is where I planned to insert several videos:

1) A video of a swarm of bugs splishing against our windshield. If you have the sound on you can hear their guts juicing out. It's melodic.

2) A video of the guy dropping the bucket into the hole and everyone laughing at him.

3) A video of the cotton men singing and dancing. Since I can't currently make those happen, please enjoy this closer photo of the cool dancers.

One possible way for you to see the videos is if Marian will upload them for me. A slightly smaller possibility is if the internet dude actually shows up tomorrow to fix our internet. But don't get too excited. We are on Day 3 of him promising to show up tomorrow and fix it right away.

Regrets and Facebook Memes

The other day I saw a motivational Facebook quote superimposed over a tranquil landscape scene. It said something to the effect of “At the end of your life, you’re going to regret the things you didn’t do and not the things you did do.” It was much more elegant than that, of course, but even if it wasn’t, it doesn’t matter because I’m pretty sure there was a waterfall somewhere in that tranquil landscape scene, which automatically classes up everything. I thought to myself, “Yeah, that’s kind of true. I still regret not petting that lion at the museum zoo in Niger while I was there.” At the last moment I decided not to because there were lots of children around, and I thought it might not be a good example for them, as they had all run up to pet the hippo after I did.  But who cares about that? I should have pet that dang lion through the bars of his cage. When else am I going to get a chance to do that? Other countries don’t just let you walk up to the cages with carnivorous animals in them and stick your hand in to pet them. I will regret not doing that for the rest of my life.

Re-creation of Motivational Facebook Quote

Pause for the moment that it took me to realize that quote wasn’t intended for people like me. That moment lasted for about 5 minutes of staring at my computer screen realizing that I am bored writing this dumb concept note that I should have finished an hour ago and that I’m no longer thinking about wells in the Guera, but about not petting lions and not shooting that camel with the Yemeni soldier’s rusty old AK-47 and not going to that one party at that one place—no wait, I DID do that and I definitely regretted it. Forget waterfalls. That quote is dumb. Whenever I manage to stop myself from doing something at the last second, it is usually because common sense finally kicks in. Better late than never, I guess.

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Anyway, here are some things that I did before I had a chance to regret them (still waiting to see if the regrets kick in later). And some memes that really spoke to me that I wanted to share with you.

Such a tranquil scene-unlike the first time I rode a motorcycle
when I nearly drove off a cliff. I still have a burn scar on my right
calf from the knalpot (I think that is 'muffler' in English)
No regrets. Except I kind of wish I had a motorcycle here...

Rock climbing with the Captain (and Matt)

Ditching the tour to try out the bamboo swing

Climbing into this alligator pit.
My parents were with me. They must not love me as much as they say they do.

Eating a scorpion in China. Tastes like chicken.

Rolling down a sand dune in the Emirates.
Then combing sand out of my hair for days.

Convincing Melia to climb up the scaffolding with me in Jordan.

All zoos can be petting zoos if you really try.

This could have been me with the lions in Niger...SO MANY REGRETS!!!

Swimming in shark and pirate-infested waters,
off the coast of Somalia.

Kissing camels

I don't know...cannon balls are cool.

He's clearly disappointed in the state of civilization these days.

How to Beat the Heat

Sunshine makes me happy.
And happy people climb totem poles.

These days, I’m so thankful to Facebook. Every morning, Facebook is there to tell me that “it’s going to be a hot day in N’Djamena today. The forecast shows a high of 44C.” What would I do without this advanced knowledge? It’s unlikely I would have even noticed the sweat dripping down my back between my shoulder blades. I might have thought there was some weird African bug crawling on me.

I’m ok with a bit of heat, as you may have noticed if you are a regular reader of this blog (HI MOM!). I was born in the desert and raised on the equator. I love the sun. And 44C is only 111F and I am doing ok. True, if my landlord had followed through with fixing my AC, as he had promised to do, I would be even better. It’s not so much that I like AC (I don’t really like it—it makes me cold), but if you have AC, you can keep a room cool with it, even when the power goes out (which happens a lot now that it’s hot and everyone is trying to use their AC to cool down their rooms). I don’t have this in my house, so I have a few other creative means of staying cool. And by staying cool, I mean that I am sweating, but at a rate that can still be replenished by drinking water.

Most of the day I’m out at work where we have the perfect AC in my office—a partially-functioning one. It gets the temperature down to about 32/90, which is ideal. So my ‘beat the heat’ options really only apply to the evening.

Brownies with crackers
in them are also a good snack.
Yeah, I ate them all myself with a
fork right out of the pan,
because it was dinnertime.

Note: I would like to mention a couple of options that have been suggested to me as ways to “beat the heat” that are not technically possible here. These include A) the cold shower and B) the consumption of ice cream. A) The cold shower is impossible because my faucets no longer provide me with cold water. Water from the faucets is always warm now, which I like because warm showers are cozy. B) The consumption of ice cream is ideal, but not when your power is unreliable. Case in point, the other day when I got home from work, what was my first clue that the power was off? My house smelled like melted butter. While this is not an unpleasant smell, it does make the inside of the fridge rather drippy. Hot melted ice cream is fine as a snack, but not as a way of keeping cool.

On continue…

Me and my new best friend
(we commemorated our love through selfies, like real friends do).
The water sprayer doesn't work anymore,
but my face is already wet (sweaty), so NBD.

In Chad, most people sleep outside during the hot season. This is a good idea. There is usually some kind of breeze and temperatures outside are cooler than inside. Unfortunately, I live on the second floor of an apartment building. I can’t drag my bed outside because there is no place to put it. Also, I don’t think it would be super-appropriate for me to sleep outside alone here (in my underwear-sleepwear of choice these days), even though my evil neighbor has moved out! (I like to think that I drove him to it by being extra-annoying, but it’s possible that he just moved out because he found a place he preferred to live.)

Since I can’t sleep outside, I really rely on my fans to keep the air moving in my house. When the electricity goes, I have a cute little battery-operated fan that was given to me in a very roundabout way (Minga gave it to Tara who told me to keep it because I was having electricity problems, and now she doesn’t want it back, which is good because I never planned to give it back anyway). This little blue thing is enough to keep one part of my body cool at a time—face or leg or back of the neck or one arm. I can balance it on a pillow next to me while I sleep, but I also have another sleep solution: the frozen water bottle. 

Pre-jungle Amanda,
of the Pil-Pil days.

I’ve started sleeping with a frozen water bottle. This is great because I have to hold something while I sleep—a habit developed from childhood when I slept with this ratty old pillow my mom made me that I called “Pil-Pil.” She made me throw it out when I went to college, and I feel a bit guilty over that still—too many readings of The Velveteen Rabbit will do that to you.  These days, I clutch that frozen water bottle near to my chest and let it melt all over me and the bed. This keeps me cool, and by the middle of the night, when it is all melted, I can drink it to start replenishing all the fluids I’ve lost by sweating, now that the frozen water is gone. It’s a very efficient system. (I recently had to explain that this is a frozen bottle of drinking water, not in fact, one of those rubber hot water bottles filled instead with ice. Apparently this makes the fact that I drink it less gross. But I work with two clean water organizations-Amanda doesn't waste water.)

But it is true that the heat is getting a lot of people down. I respect that, but still it’s such a great unifier. Everyone is in this together. Everyone is just trying to survive. We ask each other, “How are you doing with all this heat?” The preacher in church on Sunday brought it up to illustrate the importance of staying joyful in tough times. I laugh with the attendants checking my bag for bombs and dangerous weapons (like I keep those in such an obvious place) about how at least they get to work in air-conditioned hotel lobbies. It's so nice to have an automatic conversation starter and/or sermon topic. 

So no, the heat doesn’t get me down. I’m kind of thriving on it right now (though I have started waiting until the very last minute before I leave my house to put clothes on). My ‘beat the heat’ suggestions should be taken with a grain of salt, as I beat the heat when I was born. But put me in the cold weather and watch me melt into a puddle of tears (ironic since I should be freezing in the cold and not melting—so much for accurate water metaphors). I will put on all my clothes, curl up in a ball under all the blankets I stole from various airlines around the world, and look up ways to treat frost bite and hypothermia on my phone from my cave under the covers. And when you finally agree to turn the AC back up to 25C/77F, we can be friends again.

Jungle style--only for photos because again,
I LIKE the sun (and skin cancer probably someday).

A different desert than where I am now, but still fun.
I love when the air blows hot in your face like a hair-dryer.

PS: You’re welcome, Americans, for the Fahrenheit conversions.  God bless all of your hearts.

Herve's daughter appreciated the American flag I gave her.
Or Herve appreciated it anyway. He has a high level of American patriotism
that can put other bearers of the Blue Passport to shame.