The End of an Era

Taking Nathan to the airport on the day of the funeral,
so I brought Joe to help us get through the checkpoints. 

There’s no music playing anywhere. I noticed that this morning while taking the dogs for a quick walk around the neighborhood. I’m pretty sure I’ve complained a lot about loud throbbing music blaring through the night. It is one of my biggest struggles every country where I’ve lived in Africa. I have theories as to why it doesn’t seem to bother anyone but me, but it really does bother me. I’ve used ear plugs and white noise apps on my phone, but the buzz of a bass gets into my skull and makes me crazy (or crazier than usual). I get really swear-y. I have been known to throw things. In South Sudan, I actually did something positive and taught myself how to whistle loudly, with the index finger and thumb against my teeth. I always wanted to know how to do that, and no one could hear my attempts or successes, so it worked out well. 

While I don’t love music shaking the walls of my house even during the day, I don’t mind it much when I’m out walking around the neighborhood, passing by people hanging out in the shade with their radios tuned to classic African pop. I mostly hate when people call things “African” because it generalizes an entire continent, and African music is very diverse, but the pop stuff around here sounds pretty similar. People in South Sudan and Chad and Uganda and elsewhere have told me that they love Congolese music. “Lingala is the best language for singing,” I’ve heard. So we get a lot of that around here. I like the upbeat bounciness of the majority of the music—it’s got such a happy feel to it. I like watching children gathered around dancing their adorable little hearts out. But there has been no music here in Chad over the last few days. Not near me anyway.

During the covid curfew days of last year and early this year, I reveled in the quiet nights when bars were forced to shut down anywhere from 7pm to 11pm, depending on the whims of the government. Now, radios are still on, but everyone is tuned to the news.

I had been asked by my sister to write a blog about the recent elections, as I had described with gleeful detail some of the interesting and amusing campaigning going on. I didn’t love that MPS (the president’s party) kept loudspeakers on all night and into the wee hours of the morning, blaring Sudanese/Chadian Arabic style music (I am a bit nostalgic about this music, but I tend to prefer Congolese pop myself, even if it turns out the Koffi Olomide is not a very nice guy in real life). I’m out running around 5:30am in the mornings and the speakers are still blaring and NO ONE is around to listen. I don’t get it. During the campaign, cars started sticking posters of the President to their windows and bumpers, and I wondered if it was for ease of making it through checkpoints or genuine support of MPS policies. Once when stopped at a checkpoint, I watched people coming up behind us, getting their MPS flags out and hanging the out the window, getting ready for their turn at the checkpoint. A bit telling, I thought. 

MPS "Support Offices" popped up all over before the election.
This one near my house amused me because they didn't think the space 
between "du" and "MPS" was important, making this fun for English speakers,
and the 30 years of democracy because of one party shows that they might not really
understand what democracy actually is.

On the last day of the President’s big campaign, he held a rally down the street from my house. As I was out running early that morning, I passed by about 50-75 people who had come to camp out in front of the stadium where he would speak. They also came with about 30-40 horses. I loved that. I also loved that the ladies all cheered for me as I ran by. Women supporting women right there. On my way back down that street at the end of my run, I noticed that along with posters of the president’s face, which had already been adorning the lampposts for days now, there were about 4-5 giant blue beach ball type things also sporting a smiling president, affixed to the lampposts as well. I definitely stopped my run a bit earlier than usual to ask a soldier if I could touch one—I wanted to see what it was made of. He grunted assent and it turns out that it was actually a giant beachball, which has really kept me up at night wondering how that ended up being an important campaign expense. Someone on the team really thought, “Hey, posters are boring—what about giant blue blow-up beach balls with the Pres on them? That will really bring out the vote.” Whatever the reason, I really wanted one for my trip to the beach in Cameroon planned for a couple days after the election.

After the rally they moved this now-deflating ball to the airport.
I took this sneaky picture because it was worth the risk.

The campaign beach balls reminded me of this Amazon review.

My lovely friend Amanda and I decided to take on Kribi, Cameroon together.  She needed to get out for a bit, and I was happy to join her by the beach. We had a lot of fun confusing people by having the same name, teasing each other about our very different upbringings (she’s Canadian and I’m Equator Girl), swimming as much as possible and trying different kinds of shrimp and fish. We also had the most stressful time navigating the Cameroonian covid testing system, but thanks to a very kind Cameroonian lady, we got the results 15 minutes before our flight closed. 

More Cameroon photos on Instagram if you're curious about Kribi.
I'm not very good at Instagram, but I think I'm called "thedangdutlife" on there.

Amanda2

The day before we were to leave, we heard that rebel forces were closing in on N’djamena. I checked with my people on the ground in Chad and Amanda did too. They all said that they thought it would be ok to come back. My people in the US and in Australia did not like that idea, but after much insistence, some unfair insinuations from me about their motivations, and reminders of my Birkman personality test (I scored a 99% in my need for freedom), they left it to my own intuition, which has never failed to lead me into exciting places. When we left Cameroon, all was calm. When we landed, my phone blew up with whatsapp messages telling me that the roads were blocked and the military was out, and people were in full panic mode. My colleagues couldn’t get to me to pick me up, and told me to take a taxi home if I could. There were no taxis at the airport (unusual as Chad has the same “hey, come to my taxi” people that every other nearby airport has), so Amanda and I shared her taxi, which she had arranged previously to pick her up. He was the only taxi there. While people in the airport had all be smiling and reassuring, the taxi driver said, “hurry, get in, things aren’t good.” That was concerning, but as we drove to Amanda’s to drop her off, we noticed that more and more people were out. By the time I reached home, we had been told that the tanks on every corner were put there as a show of force and nothing had happened or was happening to cause concern, and people were sheepishly returning back to normal. That night we were told by the American Embassy to expect celebratory gunfire as the President’s election victory was going to be announced. No one was surprised that he had won. Most people had boycotted the elections, not wanting to stand around in 110/43 heat to vote in what many considered to be a pre-determined election. 

Ballot boxes in Chad, there was one around the corner from my house.
I saw less than 10 people there.

The next day I drove to the airport to see Claire off. Her mission insisted that they evacuate, as per the advice of the British Embassy that had also evacuated. We were very sad, and I didn’t want to miss saying goodbye. Everything seemed mostly calm that day. We expected security levels to go back to normal, but later that morning we heard the news that the President had died from wounds sustained at the front. 

I'm not much for crying, but when I heard the 21 gun salute (which we had been warned about,
as Chad military learned that people are very sensitive to abnormal use of weapons right now),
I cried for the end of a man's life. For his grieving family, for a tense and frightened nation,
for all that he did and all that he should have done. Paix à son âme.

President Deby, a military man to the core, long prided himself on actively leading his troops into battle. He was a good soldier who fought for his country and turned the Chadian military into the strongest in the region—the only one that successfully fought off Boko Haram, Al Qaeda Maghreb and other terrorist groups. He kept stability in the region, and without Chadian troops, Boko Haram would have recked even more havoc in Nigeria and Chad. But he also amassed great wealth for himself, his family, and his tribe to the detriment of a country he ruled for 30 years, leaving behind 90% unemployment, 30% literacy for men, 13% literacy for women, barely 50% access to water, and 16% access to improved sanitation facilities. These are not good conditions. Chad remains one of the poorest countries I’ve ever been in, though there are many resources that could be used to build up the economy from leather to cashews to gold to shea butter to oil or agriculture. People are desperate for change, and they need a good leader. And there were some good candidates, ready to run and work hard for their country. I have my personal favorite and I’m praying that free and fair elections are held someday and he somehow makes it. I am praying that the rebels fighting don’t send the country to civil war and then change one all-powerful tribe for another. It would be devastating for the country. But I’m also hopeful that their military will stay strong because it would be destabilizing for the region if it doesn’t. And the only role I hope the French play in a country where they have allowed and encouraged and supported a 30 year dictatorship is to ensure peaceful and fair elections and keep the country from descending into civil war. People here are saying (and I agree with them) that it is time for the French to stop treating Chadians like children. They have the right to choose for themselves. 

Chad is on the brink—of civil war that would destroy lives and set this already impoverished country even farther back than the rest of the world or of a new era of opportunities and freedom and development. Please pray with me for the latter, for this country that is so precious to me, and its people who are my family now, and this region that has been so exploited by outsiders for so long. Pray for music again (but not the kind that shakes my walls at night, please). Pray for peace. Pray for hope. Pray for new beginnings that lead to opportunity for the 15 million people of Chad.

Some more photos of real people who long for peace and opportunities.

Maybe different from you, but also the same. 

They are Chad. And I love them.