Dangdut: Superlative Moments

Isn't she the cutest?

I have a new niece! And that was a superlative moment, of course. Also, it means that I can get photos early in the day while everyone else is sleeping, but Marian is awake feeding a hungry baby. But that’s not what I meant by superlative moments.

The other day as I was backing out of my driveway, I nearly hit a horse pulling a cart stacked with firewood, and I thought, “That is the Chaddest thing to happen to me since I’ve been back.” Then while we were eating lunch, the local news did a hard-hitting exposé on how most people don’t stop for red lights, and I changed my mind because THAT is clearly Chadder. I don’t mind ignoring red lights myself—that is the freedom of Chad. Also, slightly related moment that still makes me smile: when I was able to successfully cut off a soldier on a motorcycle in the middle of traffic and he was so mad that he hit my car. But then I was gone and he was stuck and HA. Sometimes I really like Chaddy driving.

If that little red car is me backing out of my driveway,
then my adorable nephew walking behind me is a horse cart,
and everyone else (including the dog) is a reckless motorcyclist,
zipping around, trying to do serious damage.
And this is what it is like backing out of my driveway.
But picture it with more sand and no grass.

Then there have been the IAS-est things that have happened to me. One reason why I get along so well with IAS, or with Leif at any rate, is my general attitude towards planning ahead. One way to define ‘ahead’ is ‘up to or possibly rarely exceeding one hour in advance.’ So when I got the return ticket information for our drilling chief, coming back from Kenya the next day, I was ready to pick him up at the airport that night. But I got to the airport and no one was there—I don’t mean that he didn’t show up on the flight, I mean no flights came. No cars were there to pick anyone up either, so apparently everyone else but me somehow knew that the flight wasn’t coming. But don’t blame this on Chad—this was the Asky Airlines fault. Since I couldn’t get a hold of Emmanuel, as he was still presumably traveling, I called Leif, since he bought the ticket. The ticket was all in Swedish too, so I couldn’t really help. Leif had no idea and no further information, so we agreed that Emmanuel is a grown man who can take care of himself, and we would wait until he contacted us. I went to sleep. At 2:00am, I was awakened by a phone call from Herve. Startled out of a rare, deep sleep, brought on by gummy melatonin vitamins, I answered in Chinese. He didn’t notice, assuming that I was just speaking my usual poor-quality French. Apparently Emmanuel had arrived at 1am (though the guy at the airport had told me there were no more Asky flights arriving until the next week). He had taken a taxi to the office, but didn’t have keys to get in (they were with me). His phone was dying so he asked the guard to call someone. The guard called Emelie, who said she could not go out alone on her motorcycle in the middle of the night (she makes good choices). Then Emelie called Herve who was leaving the next morning at 5am to go to Abeche and should have been sleeping. He called me, and I stumbled out of bed, woke up my guard as I noisily opened the gate and drove to the office to hand over the keys, sign and stamp some papers, and hand over money.

Me and Emmanuel during the waking hours

But was that the IAS-est thing? I think probably the IAS-est thing was after Leif arrived and informed me about this team of Americans that were stopping by. Suddenly our office was in charge of getting all their paperwork together and arranging housing and transportation and visits and translation for a team that we had only the vaguest idea about. Of course we were amazing at it, but doing a lot of work on short notice just to be nice to people who are loosely connected to us is very IAS.

Then there are the Amanda-est moments—was it eating poptarts in bed while sick? Or going to the pool in sub-33 degree temperatures? Going for a run to test how sick I was? Honking the horn at all the other drivers on the road?

No. It was probably getting into a boat and convincing its surprised owner to take me across the river so I could touch Cameroon. I would have gotten out and stayed a while, but we were in a rush to get several water samples in to the lab for testing before they closed for Friday prayer time. Next time I’ll bring a picnic lunch and a harpoon to stab at the hippos—just in case.

In the meantime, I’m preparing for a month and a half of crazy domestic and international travel, which will likely provide fuel for more exciting blog posts than this one, but the sisters (one of them anyway--or was it Claire?) were restless, so here’s this mundane look into my platonic life.

Sometimes if you just do something like it's
totally normal, people will respond as if it had
always been a part of the plan. And that's how you get in a boat
and cross over the river to Cameroon before your
project manager realizes what you were going to do.