Visitors, Part 1 (with photos from South Africa that are not relevant to the post at all)

Intrepid explorer pose on top of Table Mountain,
photo cred: Claire Bedford

I don’t get many visitors from other continents here in Chad. I get plenty of Chadian visitors, foreign visitors living in Chad, Africans from other countries, so it’s not like I’m short on company. I’m not complaining. Just saying that it is a big deal to have a team of visitors come here. We could blame it on covid stuff, but let’s be honest—even before covid I’d had a grand total of 2 visits from neverthirst people in Chad. This visit really tried hard not to happen too. It was postponed twice and ended up being in the hottest, dustiest part of the year. They got the full experience though.

Thanks to Claire for this photo of me being helpful on an airplane,
translating for a guy in the exit row who could only speak Arabic.
The flight attendant only spoke English (and probably several Ethiopian languages).
The seatmate only spoke English and French. Others in the plane apparently only spoke Arabic.
I offered to help because I didn't want the tall guy to have to move out of the exit row seat he needed for his long legs. The flight attendant was very thorough in telling him everything he needed to know in case of emergencies, and I translated, but fortunately his services were not required.

Planning ahead for this trip was interesting. We had everything planned, then one of the team members tested positive for covid. We postponed a few days, hoping that would sort it out, but the while the person felt fine and was cleared by American doctors for non-covid-spreading travel, the PCR tests were still positive. My covid test guy (who comes to my house to do a PCR test and is really cool about being super gentle—almost doesn’t even touch the inside of your nose—and being really helpful about whatever date he puts on your test) said, “Why doesn’t someone just give your friend a negative PCR test already? They know she isn’t contagious anymore and the PCR tests aren’t accurate for Omicron strains.” And I was told that the American doctor was equally annoyed that we had to have a PCR test saying, “Why don’t they accept this letter written by an American doctor that airlines in the US accept for travel?” But they (Niger) don’t. A negative PCR is a must to enter Niger. Chad recently has decreed that vaccinated travelers don’t need a PCR anymore. At the time of our original plans (Plans A and B), we were going to start in Niger and finish the trip in Chad. We changed that plan for Plan C and started in Chad, but everyone had negative PCRs by then anyway so it didn’t matter. It did mean that my Cape Town Vacation with Claire, intended to be a recovery from two weeks of tour guiding the Americans (and 1 Australian! He made a point to everyone that we met that HE is not American, so I will respect his wish to be Not American even here on this blog that only my mother and one or two other people will read), ended up being “pre-relaxing” in anticipation of a very busy two weeks. I mean, it was nice, but just meant I was a lot chubbier from all our Uber Eats adventures for traveling with the Americans (and Jason, from Australia). On another note: how fun is it to order food from almost any restaurant and have it show up at your door? Claire and I really enjoyed this moment of modernity. Fortunately, as I said, it’s the hottest time of year here in Chad, so we are both back to our pre-South Africa weights.

Pre-relaxing!

Four days after getting back from South Africa, I was waiting in the airport for the visitors. I schmoozed the airport guards (they do love a nasara who speaks Arabic) and told them about how pitiable all my visitors were (even the Australian) as none of them speak French or Arabic and they would probably all be lost in the chaos of N’djamena International Airport if they didn’t let me in to wait for them at baggage claim. I’ve found that very few people in this world share my Airport Competitiveness that means I push through all the people, squeeze through those slowly dragging their roll-y bags, dodge screaming exhausted children, and usually I am one of the first people out of the airport. It also helps that I have a collection of airport forms that I fill out in advance. Claire understands and accepts this adorable quirk of mine, and she can definitely keep up, but groups of people who don’t have all their passport info memorized and all want to stay together for safety in numbers rarely can. Every time we went through an airport for this trip, we were the last people or among the last people to leave the airport. In Niger, they got mad at us for taking so long because we were the last flight arriving and they wanted to go home. I was trying to keep everyone together because I was trying to translate for all of them, but they wouldn’t let me, so I just yelled out commands like “Give them that paper with your visa info on it” or “Now finger prints” and eventually we all got out, though they didn’t give us the right paper and it caused a bit of trouble later (it was sorted without either foreigner, American or Australian, knowing about it).

I won’t get into details about the trip. It was for media purposes. Follow neverthirst on social media and when you start to see some really good photos it was under the artistic direction of one brilliant Tara Shupe with the assistance of one talented Bob Ditty. You can follow them on Instagram too if you want to see some exceptional photos and videos. You’re welcome, Tara and Bob: I’ve now increased your online following by two (2) people. 

Bob working hard while I play with a baby goat.

Starting in Chad was a good idea, I think. You need a bit more energy for Chad, and the team came in ready and excited to be here. Still at the point where bumpy roads are an adventure and the sandy air gives everything a nice dusty color. Open wells where horses ride back and forth pulling up water for people and animals are fascinating and girls riding donkeys carrying baskets with jerrycans of water for the families require an immediate stop for photos. As one of the drivers, I obliged most of the time, startling locals as white people sprouted out of my truck bristling with camera equipment. Most people thought it was great fun, especially the children who screamed “airplane, airplane” at the drone and followed Tara and Bob closely until adults chased them away. I made it clear that if anyone ever said they didn’t want their photo taken, we immediately oblige and walk away. I can only remember that happening once, actually. A beautiful lady in bright red on her donkey laughingly told us to go away. When I translated for the team that she didn’t want her photo taken, they were surprised because she really was laughing as she shooed us away. And we left her in peace because I don’t want to be paparazzi out here—we were trying to tell stories not sell tabloids. And really we had more than enough people actually want to be in photos. 

I don't know who took this photo. It was not the professionals,
but you can see all the interested people, me holding a baby and translating

I do like having visitors because I get to see Chad again through their eyes, but it is a lot of work. I was translating between multiple languages, which is exhausting in itself, plus driving over unpaved roads in the dark because apparently the light is best at sunrise and sunset, and trying to make sure everything was going smoothly. One by one each of my visitors succumbed to various ailments and illnesses brought on by heat, food incompatibility with western intestinal fortitude, and/or dehydration. The Australian held out the longest, which could be a credit to inherent Australian toughness or could be due to the fact that he came from summertime and everyone else came from wintertime. Some of the ailments I knew how to treat myself: sit in the truck with the AC on full blast, drink this bottle of water with rehydration salts in it and eat one of the 5 million power bars you brought with you and you’ll be ok in 30 minutes to an hour. Or take this Immodium pill that some other nasaras gave me a while back that hasn’t expired yet even though I’ve never used them myself. For anything else I couldn’t treat, I went to my favourite health advisor: Dr Claire Bedford, pharmacist extraordinaire. She graciously answered my many calls and sent medical advice and a list of meds to buy. She also advised on the many illnesses I was shown by locals—antibiotics asap for the little girl with an infection on her hand and medical consultation in N’djamena for the little boy with a tumor. To be clear, I like to pretend to be tough but gross skin things do kind of freak me out. I’m glad I am not a doctor, but I wish we had more of them out here in Chad because there are so many needs. And I wish I could take one on trips with me because people are always telling me about their medical stuff and the most I can offer usually is ibuprofen. 

I am teaching Esther to be a baby snatcher.
Esther just started working with IAS here doing communications.
How did she get her job? Easy: she drove her motorcycle into my truck,
and I took her to the hospital and we became friends. 

Before I move on to the other situation where I had to make myself useful, I would like to take a moment to thank Matt for driving two hours from the river back to Moussa’s house after dark on unpaved roads against the express wishes of Mariassou (the other driver) who said, “Amanda, I trust you. You know how to drive here. He doesn’t know how to drive here. He could wreck the car!” But I’d already promised Matt and he was so excited, so I told him that Mariassou had no faith in him, making it clear to him that he really needed to do an excellent job here to prove him wrong, and it was a rousing success. Also I had a nice break from nighttime dusty driving. Matt said it was super fun like a video game. And Mariassou told him he did a good job driving, and he was very proud of winning him over. 

Note: regarding the above photo about Esther driving her motorcycle into my truck--that accident was NOT my fault. I was just sitting there, waiting for my chance to turn when she hit me, so that incident should not define my driving. Mariassou, a professional driver, saying that I know how to drive on Chadian roads absolutely SHOULD define my driving.

Another Note: after I finished writing the whole story of everything that happened in the space of a few hours of Chad traveling to Niger adventure (plus brief description of our time in Niger), I realized that this post was too long for anyone to want to read, so I decided to cut it in half. First half is here, second will come tomorrow or maybe next week if it takes me that long to decide to post it. Instead, please enjoy these non-professional photos of our time in Cape Town because I am not going to blog about it because I'm too lazy, but we had fun.

Table mountain

Beach day

Best friends allow each other to do their own thing:
I wanted to climb Table Mountain, but Claire wanted to take the cable car up.
Neither of us tried to convince the other to changer her mind,
and we both had fun, though only I nearly died of heat exhaustion.

Sure, I'm ready to climb up a mountain at the hottest time of day with no water.
A nice man offered me some, but I had to prove that I could make it.

I liked the hiking views.

And the top of the mountain views.

Our really nice Rwandan driver/tour guide
took this great photo of us.

He also took this one.

Claire is also a good enough friend that she joins me when I insisted on
putting my feet in the sea at the Cape of Good Hope,
even though we had to walk through piles of bug-infested seaweed (not pictured) to get there.

Cape of Good Hope!

Also great friends agree that if you can see penguins for free
right by where you had lunch, then there's no reason to pay to go to the penguin museum.

I almost caught this one.

Claire, looking good, repping the neverthirst hat

Rooibos tea and a caramel cheesecake ball.

More of this later