Field Trips

 The best field trip I ever went on in my life was the chocolate factory in Bandung. It was like Willy Wonka but nobody turned into a blueberry or was humiliated by an Oompa Loompa song. The factory workers made it their mission to stuff our fat foreign fingers with as much chocolate as we could hold. They also gave us plastic bags to hold our loot. And I also used the pristine white cap we were supposed to be wearing to keep our hair out of the vats of melting chocolate as a secondary container. To anyone who found a blonde hair in your Silver Queen circa 1994, I apologize.  Probably most parents, like mine, confiscated those plastic bags from their children’s jittery hands as soon as they picked us up from school, but possibly many children, like myself, had made a significant dent in their contents before handing them over. My ability to consume incredibly large amounts of sugary treats in one go has been with me from childhood.

Silver Queens of the Modern Era

These days, I’m still going on field trips, though they don’t generally involve chocolate anymore, as chocolate here melts as soon as you take it out of the refrigerator. This trip I subsisted on mangos and Smurf gummies that I bought in Modern Market. (I hold on to a secret hope that whenever I check out at Modern Market, the ladies think I’m buying supplies for a birthday party for a six-year-old. I mean, how rude of them to assume that I’m going to eat all of the gummies and chips and cookies myself?!) My most recent trip with the DONG (Direction des Organisations Non-Gouvernementales) was to visit our projects out east to for the DONG to see what we have accomplished. Yes, I did laugh the first time I got the DONG report, because everyone has a little bit of 12 year old boy humor in them, but now I’m starting to get over it. I understand if you have not reached the point of maturity yet, and you need to laugh about my trip with the DONG. Take your time and come back later. Or never. Your choice.

The view on Chadian road trips.

A good portion of this trip was spent in the car. I don’t mind car trips. I like being able to see the people and the scenery. As the sole girl on this excursion (as per usual), I was given the front seat, which I graciously accepted. And then I not-so-graciously accepted for everyone’s bags to sit under and upon my feet. Just like men to not want to carry their stuff so they give it to their ladies to put in their purse. Joke’s on them though: I never carry a purse. I would-I just can’t get around to buying one, so I’ve been carrying a pouch that had socks and toothbrush in it from a trip on Turkish Air a few months ago. Then that ripped, so I found another small wallet, and then that zipper broke, so I fixed it with a paperclip. I have also not been robbed recently, so I think there is a connection with carrying money in shabby pouches and not being mugged.

My friend at the SECADEV lodge in Adré.
He slept outside my bedroom.

Because of how much time we spent in the car, the night we got back I fell asleep to one of the songs we heard multiple times on that journey, as we cycled through all of the music on our driver’s flash drive. The song I fell asleep to had a refrain that said, “Fi Juba, ajmal medina fi duniya.” I was not aware that anyone classified Juba as “the most beautiful city in the world,” but apparently this guy has, and Chadians love this song, probably because none of them has ever been to Juba. Ok, I’ll stop maligning Juba—it’s not bad, and there are lots of lovable people there.

 

A lovable Kenyan driller in Chad, who lived and worked
in South Sudan during the height of the war,
and he can tell stories.

Now I’ll malign Enrique Iglesias. We were assaulted by several of his songs thanks to the flash-drive. I pondered the lyrics to one particular gem of a song, where he laments the fact that he is in love with someone who doesn’t return his love anymore. The line “Do you know what it feels like to be the last one to know the lock on the door has changed?” was particularly telling about his relationship with this woman. If she broke up with him as fast as possible and changed the locks on the door, she doesn’t just not love him anymore: she never wants to see him again and is clearly so afraid of him that she does not want him to be able to have the ability to get into her house anymore. I hope he soon knows what it feels like to be slapped with a restraining order.  Worse even than Enrique, worst boyfriend ever, was the medley of country songs that followed. I don’t know who the singer was because I try to avoid the country music genre at all costs. I know that it is traditionally accepted for many of my generation to despise country music, and I hate to go with the flow, but it really grates on me. I like bluegrass though…so I’m still not like everyone else! Anyway, I want to say this singer was Shania Twain because I find her particularly pernicious, and not just because she is Canadian. With time and distance from South Sudanese immigration officials, my grudge against Canada is easing. Somehow I survived Shania AND South Sudan.

Man and donkey.
Not pictured: Enrique Iglesias

The music selection wasn’t all bad. I found some interesting Congolese singers I didn’t know about before (Koffi Olomide and Cindy le Coeur) that I will be adding to my music collection. After all, it was one such trip where I learned about Magic System, band of cool Ivorian dudes who is a staple on my play lists now and has taught me lots of important French lingo.

The hazards of rainy season road trips.
Note: this is NOT our car, but our car passed through successfully
the previous day. I'm not sure how this happened.

Kandos telling me not to take a picture while I take a picture.
Too late.
We are good friends.

And the driver and I had some good times. One night in the field, I asked to borrow a knife to cut the mangos Kandos bought for me on the way there because I am too sophisticated to chew off the peel with my teeth. And also lazy.  They came back with a huge dagger, which was not actually great for peeling mangos, but would have been good protection if we had been attacked by Robin Hood bandits with bows and arrows or swords or something. As I was joking about protecting the group with my dagger, the driver said to me, “No. You are not holding that right. If you hold it like that, your attacker can take it away from you.” (Clearly, he saw something in me that led him to believe that I have the potential to be a great dagger-fighter.) He then gave me a long lecture about the proper way to use a knife in a fight. “I always have a knife with me,” he said, patting his thigh knowingly. “You have one with you right now?!” I said. “Well, I actually left it back at the lodge while we were eating, but I have it. You never know when you need to protect yourself.” Clearly.

Demonstrating the proper way to hold a knife.
Except that you can't really tell.

Of course, a knife won’t protect you from bad drivers. After a near miss with a bus that was driving straight at us, taking up two lanes, he turned to me and said, “No! You cannot die. You haven’t had children yet! You need to have at least 4- a boy that looks like his father and a girl that looks like her mother and a boy that looks like both parents and a girl that looks like both parents.” I think he has thought through this a lot farther than I have.

The Chef du Canton telling us that IAS
came at the exact moment they needed us.

As I said, most of my trip was spent in the company of other men. This is a male-oriented field, mostly. Since it’s Ramadan, we didn’t have to stop for lunch and I didn’t eat in front of anyone. So we would break fast together every night. It was usually me and 5-11 men. It’s not bad eating with large groups of men because even though at least one of them told me I need to get fatter so that I can be beautiful, they do not pressure you to eat like women do. I think they are actually secretly hoping you don’t eat much. And I don’t worry about not liking some of the food because none of them were the ones who made it. So not bad.

Break fast meal in Abeche

Break fast meal in Adré--each with his own spoon.

But I did jump at the chance to hang out with women at the wells and when visiting the self help groups. They were all really fun to talk to, understanding my Sudanese Arabic, and sensing my need for female companionship. While well drillers tend to be male, well-users tend to be female. So we met plenty of ladies in the field.

Hanging with the ladies. I'm sure you can't tell which is me.
Alifa got some good photos of me talking with them, but
he has not sent them to me yet.

I like the kids too--who get serious when you take a photo,
and then rush over laughing to see themselves.

My favorite photo.
Baby Mohamed kept making hilarious faces at me.
His mom thought it was really funny too.

Our last day was to be all with ladies, many of whom I have met previously on other visits, and I was looking forward to it, but at the last minute the DONG rep decided we would skip this last day and go straight back to N’Djamena that night. So we did, breaking fast on the way by consuming a large goat together. I ate about 5 pieces of that goat. I got way behind because piece number 3 took 15 minutes to chew. 

And who was so happy to see me arrive home? Felix, the cat who did not pee on anything while I was gone because I took precautions: