N'Djamena Marathon

 

Jesse wanted a photo of us under the sign that said "Marathon de la Paix"
What a marathon it was!

A few days ago I saw an ad on Facebook for a race to be held in my city on the weekend in solidarity with Sudan put on by Sudanese youth living in N’djamena. It was advertised as a “marathon 5k.” I figured the distance would be 5km because Chadians usually say “marathon” to mean a running race of any distance, but you never know. The advertisement was sufficiently vague on other information as well, but it had a start and end location, a beginning time and a date. In the comments people were asking for more information about how to run, and the response was being sent a screenshot of the same advertisement that we were all already looking at. I decided to send a message, and I was sent a phone number to call. I don’t like calling numbers I don’t know, so I sent a text message. I got no response and I forgot about it until I had a call later that night. Usually I don’t answer numbers I don’t recognize, but I did for some reason. Our conversation was as follows:

Me: Bonsoir Salam Allo (because I didn’t know what language to speak when I don’t know who is calling).

Him: Bonsoir.

Long pause….

Me: Uh..excuse me, but can you please tell me who is calling?

Him: Mohamed Idriss. (This doesn’t help me much—including being the name of our current president, it is a very common name here). Who are you?

Me: Uh…yeah…but you called me?

Mohamed Idriss (not the president): Oh yeah. I’m calling about the marathon.

And then the rest of the conversation was about how to register (give name, age, and contact number) and also he mentioned that they had met a guy who is really great at organizing races and the race was going to be 10km. I signed up and signed up Jesse, my friend from Nigeria who has run with me a couple times. The first time he ran, I was thinking he was going to be miserable and stop early because last time I had guys tell me they wanted to run with me and that it would be no problem because they play football a lot, they died after 1km. Jesse had said he wanted to run and 5km was no problem because he plays football, but he is also a good runner, so he was fine, and I had to keep up a faster pace than I wanted to the whole time to make sure I didn’t embarrass myself. I did also try to remind myself that he is 10 years years younger than me and that helped sooth the ego a bit too.

Hissein, Jesse, random vertically challenged nasara, Tresor

The night before the race, my evil Cameroonian neighbors decided to have a loud drunken orgy that made everyone miserable. They were still going, screaming and drunk singing and peeing all over everyone’s houses when I left at 6:40, and I was not in a great mood. I knew there was no point in getting to the race on time, but I did anyway. My friend Tresor who is a great runner and runs all the N’djamena races told me that it was for sure 10km and he had gotten there at 6:30am and was already texting me about it. 

Jesse and I got there and found a group of people looking for their race numbers. At one point a line formed but then the organizers started yelling out names (Mohamed Idriss, Mohamed Abdullah, Mohamed Issa, etc) and the line system fell apart quickly. Eventually we found our numbers—pretty quickly actually: we were 002 and 003 because I was one of the first to register for the race. We were also given a couple of little vest top things, which we were told were for advertising. Jesse had “American cola” (a local coke brand) and I had “Planet” which is also a type of beverage. We asked about pinning the numbers on our shirts, and were directed to the guy with a stapler, who was stapling numbers to people. Two minutes later, the stapler was broken. Were there any spare staplers? No. They started breaking off bits of staples and handing them out so people could pinch them with their fingers and mold them into pins to hold the numbers. I was not good at this and Jesse and Hissein helped. Hissein agreed to run in Steven’s place because Steven wasn’t feeling well, but he’d told me he would run. Steven, Hissein, and Tresor are deaf friends of mine who are all great athletes and helping to film a dictionary for Chadian Sign Language. (We want to make a dictionary app, so if you know anyone who can help make apps, please tell me.) Tresor is well known in the running community because he is an excellent runner and he trains people. Hissein and Steven prefer basketball to running, but wanted to come along for fun.

Stapling by hand

At 8am, the race still hadn’t started and it was getting hotter. By 8:30, just before we lined up, an announcement was made: this race is not going to be 10km. It is going to be 2 kilometers 300 meters. (According to my watch, it didn't even end up being 2km, and I didn’t cut off the corners like other people did.) 

Post-race with Tresor and Hissein laughing as they bent down
to be in the same photo with me and Jesse.
Jesse said he bent down too to have some self-respect,
which is why it looks like we are the same height when actually he is taller than me.

So everyone is lined up, now ready for a short sprint to Place de la Nation, and the start line happens to be right next to the city morgue. So as people are jogging around and pumping each other up, cars are driving up full of mourners with photos of the deceased precariously perched on their roofs. It was an awkward juxtaposition. 

This is the starting line where we kept having to move over
to let mourners through

The guy who informed us of our race distance change clapped two wooden blocks together and we all sped off. While there were a couple of policemen at one corner, the other roads we were on weren’t really blocked off and motorcycles and cars dodged us as we dodged potholes and it was all very exciting. 

The beautiful and amazing Fraida

We crossed the finish line and went to chat with Tresor and Hissein who were way ahead of us (note that Jesse and I are also half their height) and unfortunately they didn’t win. Our friend Fraida (not deaf but still very cool) who also runs in our neighborhood won for the women—not at all a surprise. She is a badass runner who has run in competitions around the world. She went to train in Kenya a few months ago, but told me it wasn’t worth it because it was too easy for her. We took a lot of photos, and as the only nasara, I was invited to be in many photos. I was also asked to do an interview for a radio station in Arabic. I specified that my Arabic is a mishmash of multiple accents and grammatical patterns, but they were happy. I refused to answer a question giving my honest opinion about the current president (Mohamed Idriss) and his Sudan policies because I am a foreigner and I don’t want to get kicked out of the country. I was able to say how great the organizers did (I mean is it really important to have decided on a route before the race day?) and how I’m sure they will do other great things. I should note that there were some Chinese guys there as well. I chatted a bit with one of them, but they don’t usually speak French and so people don’t often try to speak with them so I doubt they got too many interview requests. When I told this story to my friend Naomi, she said it reminded her of the time I was interviewed for Chinese TV when I accidentally joined the communist party, which was funny because I was remembering it too. I always managed to look really gross and sweaty when I’m interviewed for the news and usually have nothing important to say either. I don’t think I wrote about that for the blog because it happened before I started blogging, but I have it in a journal somewhere. Maybe I’ll publish it one day.

All miked up and waving my hands around for a radio interview, as one does.

Anyway, we planned to leave after Tresor, Hissein and Steven left to go to work. But the nasara effect worked against me and I was stopped by a sweet young Sudanese girl who asked me please to stay for the presentation about the desire for unity for Sudan and Chad. I didn’t feel I could say no and Jesse graciously stayed with me. He was really fun to have around because we could joke around in English and he was very careful to take lots of photos of me in awkward moments. 

Post-run with Jesse

Our lovely Sudanese girl found a couple of t-shirts for us, which was nice. Jesse got one in French and I got one in Arabic. Then we were handed bottles of red soda (Planet brand!) and little boxes of food while speeches started. They were long and flowery and I enjoyed the heckling from some guys sitting behind us, one of whom I’ve also run with in my neighborhood.  He’s actually caught me at the end of a couple of my runs when I was planning to stop early and dragged me home. Finally speeches were over, and it was time for awards. They handed them out to the 3 fastest women and the 3 fastest men. The average time to complete the race for them was 5 minutes something. 

Then they announced two more winners: the veteran category. This was a nice way of saying the winners for the two oldest competitors in the race. Guess who won for the women? That’s right—I won best geriatric woman runner for the Marathon. A truly remarkable achievement. I’m sure you’re all very impressed. And if any of you are slightly older than me, pat yourself on the back because anyone could run 2km and if you ran and were old, you won. 

Surrounded by the press who were there to note my achievement

With the Veteran Man winner
whose face shows how honored he was to receive this award.

Finally we were able to leave after the awards. Jesse dragged me away saying I talk too much, but I mean, I was an award winner. People wanted to be near me to bask in the glow of my success. Jesse and I decided just to walk home, as my house is not far from Place de la Nation. I think in all, including our 2km race, we didn’t even go 8km by the time we got home. And also—while Jesse was taking photos of me getting my award, people took our food. Oh well—they can never take my Veteran Medal from me. I earned that. By being old.

Antarctica-Checking Off the Last Continent

Penguin selfie!

 I’ve been promising to write about this for a while because I got back in February and it’s now April. I don’t know what happened, but probably just extreme laziness on my part and the inevitable passing of time that is out of my control. Since I got back from Antarctica/Argentina, I’ve already been in Ethiopia, and I’m heading to Zanzibar on Monday because I’m a long-suffering good friend who would do anything for Claire, including going back to a place I’ve already been. But just this once… I figured before I get on to that trip and then the next one (meetings in Cambodia with Africans coming along—sure to be exciting mix of my Southeast Asian childhood and my African old age hood), I should probably write a few things here so I can tell people I did it and then I can go back to my normal lazy existence. 

I have had plenty of people demand in person stories from my trip, and I’ve shown lots of photos, most recently at an American Embassy function I was invited to a few days ago. It was not at the Embassy, but conveniently in my neighborhood. I know the lady who organized it and she was very upset because the generator wasn’t working at the venue in spite of the fact that it had worked every other day that week. It was probably the first time that most of the fancy Embassy people had to spend an extended period of time without AC, so I think it was good for them ultimately. Anyway, not the function organizer who was understandably busy, but another American Embassy friend asked me to tell her about my trip.

My main quick spiel is that it was amazing, I liked it more than I even expected, not that I didn’t expect to like it, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. There is an other-worldly beauty about Antarctica that Debbie (my go-to, always up for an adventure, let’s make it happen, thankfully organized friend) and I kept marveling at. We were often sailing by mountains that looked like they were painted onto a wall for an old fashioned movie set. We, creative brilliant geniuses that we are, dubbed them “Fake Mountains.” We laughed about how many photos we took of the very first distant iceberg we saw once we were surrounded by them, but we were definitely obsessed with how beautiful and fascinating they were. And of course the animals—penguins, seals, whales, dolphins, albatross—always amazing to see. 

Debbie is a very good photographer and has long complained that I lack her skills. She learned if she wanted me to take a photo to be very specific about what she wanted, and then there was a 60% chance she would get that photo on her phone. I learned that I could leave my hands toasty warm in my gloves and let her take photos that would be way better than any I would take anyway. We planned to share photos and did share some, but not all so sorry about that, but I really think you should just go visit yourself. Or if you want professional photos, there were several professional photographers on our trip who got amazing photos, and I’m sure they’re easy to find online should you want to see an adorable penguin floating on an iceberg or a seal yawning or something.

I realized when I was trying to pick photos
that mostly I have videos of penguins because they are so cute.
But I can never make videos work on the blog so you'll have to make do with photos.

This is the first organized tour type thing that Debbie and I have ever done as we tend to prefer wandering around by ourselves, but we aren’t experienced enough sailors to make it from Ushuaia, through the Drake Passage, to Antarctica, and back. Debbie certainly never would have made it as she was miserably seasick the first day until I made friends with the Indonesian staff working on the boat (yay for that Southeast Asian childhood again!) and convinced her to take the real meds instead of the hippie stickers and bracelets TikTok recommended to her. 

This photo hurts my vanity because I look insane, 
but Ibu Lu was wonderful and I can't find any other photos with her.
We sat in her part of the restaurant every night. She was the best.
Pasti orang Indonesia yang paling bagus!

While I appreciated the nerd lectures on the boat (and Debbie appreciated being able to watch them from the TV while lying down in her bunk) and also the activities that we got to do and not having to drive a boat by ourselves (although I do think I would have enjoyed that), we were not sad to leave the boat and have a few days afterwards to explore Buenos Aires and Colonia del Sacramento (Uruguay). We also had fun hiking to the Laguna Esmeralda in Ushuaia too. We ate a lot of good food and drank a lot of very good beverages and had a lovely time. Thanks, Debbie, for always being up for my crazy trip ideas!

We made it to Laguna Esmeralda and beat the time everyone said it would take.
Had to call our taxi driver to come back early. 

And now I’m going to share a few more photos that you can skim through. Thanks to my friend Lisa who told me that there is a limited number of people allowed on land at each landing site in Antarctica so we knew to get a smaller boat to make sure we made it to land. The limit is 100 people on land at a time. The other people would ride around in zodiacs (inflatable boats) and see wildlife and ice bergs up close and then switch. Debbie and I learned that we are very competitive hikers and need to be the first up any hill or to any Laguna Esmeralda and we don’t suffer slowpokes. We also learned that a lot of determined retirees with varying levels of physical fitness go on these trips and it can be tricky to get around them, but we managed.

Enjoy the photos and pretend you’re just swiping away on my phone like everyone else here did, but hopefully you are reading this from a nice cool environment because it is a million degrees here and we haven’t had electricity in several months now because most of the national electric company’s generators are broken. The Egyptian Consulate closed the other day because they had no power and their back up systems weren't working. Claire and I are going to Zanzibar to enjoy some rain, though Naomi coming from Northern Ireland is hoping for some sunshine. On va voir. 

My trip started out in luxury because I upgraded myself with miles.
Thanks, Sheba Miles, for always bringing the adventure of running all over Bole Airport,
whenever you want to use your miles because only one Ethiopian Airlines employee at a time
knows all the intricate rules of how to use your miles, and you never know where to find him...

On the bus in Ushuaia!

Excited to be in Ushuaia, preparing to board our boat the next day.

Our boat room!

To Antarctica!

Boat lectures

The first iceberg!

Some fake mountains--photos don't so it justice.
I'm not sure if they looked fake because of the quality of Antarctic summer light,
or because I'm not used to sun on snow.

I showed the photos to Moussa, who loves poultry of all kinds, 
and has a "collect them all mentality" owning chickens, ducks, guinea fowl, and turkeys.
He was very interested in penguins and their eggs:
"How can I get one of these? What do the eggs taste like?"
Considering its 46C/115F here right now, I don't think he should try to develop the industry here in Chad.

7 in Sign Language for our 7th continent

Look at this great photo Debbie took--she is truly an artist.

Glad to have each other as apparently lots of people can't find anyone
crazy enough to go with them on this trip so there were lots of single travelers.

We became friends with this cool London girl, which is good because 
before I left Hassan told me that this is a crazy trip that only white people would do.
"What if you get eaten by a penguin or some other dangerous animal?"
I said, "I think I'm in more danger of getting attacked by a hippo that lives near my house
or getting in a car wreck driving around Ndjamena." He did concede the point,
 after I showed him what a penguin is. But he still thought it was a dumb thing to do.
Michelle is Jamaican/British so I showed him not only white people do this.
When I admitted she was the only one of African ancestry and also she's actually British,
he said it proved his point. I would have counter pointed that there were a TON of Chinese
people on my flight back who had all been to 南极洲
but to Chadians nasaras and Chinese are basically the same.

Eating a piece of an ice berg right out of the ocean!

I will say in Moussa's defense:
legend has it that once a tourist stole a penguin from the beach
and stowed it in his bathroom. Maintenance finally broke in and freed it,
three days later once the bathroom stank so much people got suspicious.
They had to turn the boat around and return the penguin to its home.
So Moussa is probably not the only one wondering about breeding penguins.

An old whaling ship, sunk decades ago.

My Aussie friends were so psyched that John Eales was on our ship.
He was a good speaker too. His wife was also lovely.
Of course, I'm a Rugby League fan myself--Go Broncos!
Always cheer the boss's favourite ('u' for Australian) team.

Definitely did the polar plunge. No regrets.
Debbie, of course, tried to swim away, as she is a champion swimmer,
I used skills honed over the 8 years of not having a heater for my shower.
At this point, I wish I had a cooler for my shower because the water comes out hot.
I'm remembering this plunge fondly as I sweat in front of a fan that is pushing hot air around my house.

Cool artsy photo that Debbie took of the floor
in a cool Buenos Aires neighborhood with too many tourists.

Exploring Buenos Aires!

Colonia del Sacremento

Still Uruguay

I convinced Debbie to get matched tattoos:
7 in Arabic script since we met in the Middle East
and visited our 7th continent together.
In this photo it looks like she is the one trying to convince me, 
but I am the bad influence in this case.

Fortunately, she loved it.
Thanks to Norberto!

Fancy alfajor with tea on Debbie's coffeeshop tourism day.
I think she had about 6 cups of coffee in a few hours.
Or maybe that was another day?

Tigre, Argentina where people live by the river and own speed boats.

Tigre

I'll leave you with a couple more iceberg photos:

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.