Holiday Seasoning in Chad

Me and la belle Emelie chez le Hilton

Whenever I take photos lately with friends, they frequently ask “if this is going to show up on the blog” sometime. To be honest, it’s always a possibility—unless you specifically tell me not to put it up there. But don’t worry: my mom, aka my main reader, always loves all my friends and her text messages to me go something like this:

“Hi Amanda! How are you today? What are you doing today? Are you feeling ok? Are you eating healthy food and drinking all the water? If you don’t drink enough water, you know you will get sick and die, right? How are all your friends? What is Claire doing? How is Naomi’s work going? When are you going to hang out with Rhyan again? Is Emelie feeling better? Maybe tell her to drink more water. What about Herve? How is his wife after the motorcycle accident?” Add in a few Bible verses and assurances of continued prayer for all of our well-being, and you’ve basically talked to my mom.

My dad’s text messages are shorter: “How are you doing? When are you coming home? Have you bought tickets yet?”

But yes, Claire, this photo of our Thanksgiving celebration is going to end up on the blog.

I'm the one with the crazy eyes in the middle of my lovely group of normal-looking yet beautiful friends.

As you can see, it was an epic celebration of Thankfulness. We ate lots of food and generously invited the former colonizers (those dang Brits) to celebrate alongside of us.

Last year I was in Uganda eating mangos for my Thanksgiving feast. It was not a bad feast. But this year I had my own oven and I got serious about making the food I really like for Thanksgiving, though we can’t get canned cranberry sauce out here, which is one of the few things that tastes better than home-made stuff. You can disagree with me, but you are wrong. Anyway, I baked and baked and baked and bought a can of whipped cream at the store and ate it all and had to buy another.

Baking-don't be fooled: the blender doesn't work.

Finished products (not all by me)

Dinner plate

Dessert

Then I started on Christmas celebrations, watching Rhyan’s employees put up a giant tree. I realized that though I really like Christmas and I enjoy looking at other people’s decorations, I do not mind at all not having to help with the process. As a child, I used to disrupt the process greatly, adding blasphemous Santa hats into the manger scenes or decorating an unappreciative cat. Usually, my sisters would not appreciate my creative additions to their careful home-making skills, but thanks to heightened seasonal Christmas Spirit, they could accept my jokes with good grace and not get too annoyed with me when I didn’t help with anything else.  Fortunately, no one at the Hilton asked for my help.

Hilton decorating

Rhyan is also super helpful and she was crazy busy preparing for the Christmas Market
(which was amazing, by the way!)

The Hilton also ended up being the location of our end of the year IAS Christmas party, thanks to the beautiful Rhyan, who always hooks me up. My staff were so excited to see the Hilton all sparkly and decorated up for Christmas.  I even dressed up because I knew they would love it, and I was feeling generous. Hopefully that image of me lasts for a long time in their minds so I don’t have to do it again any time soon. I have one blurry photo of me that Marthe took, and naturally, I’m carrying my only bag, a lovely cloth one crafted by the Acacia ladies, which Claire made me buy so I’d stop carrying my wallet and phone around in my hand like a man. Since unlike most men, I wear girl(ish) clothes that don’t have pockets, the bag really helped. It did not exactly match my dress, though, as Rhyan kindly pointed out. But Herve said, “Tu est très belle ce soir et je te tire mon chapeau,” so I guess it was worth it putting on the heels.

Joe didn't want to take dress-up photos with me

He's not wearing a chapeau to tire at me,
but I do appreciate this guy

The rare sight of Amanda in heels and a dress,
complete with unmatching bag.
The camera was so shocked, it blurred.
Photo credit: Marthe's phone

My team said they really enjoyed the experience, though everyone was a lot quieter than usual, awed by the splendor around them. One of my staff said, “It’s like you brought us to paradis.” I had one of those moments when I was happy to have given him that experience and also overwhelmed by the unfairness of life where a day spent at the Hilton for me is not a rarity (I like hanging out with Rhyan by the pool!), but it is an other-worldly moment for people I work with every day. I have so much more than I need or deserve, and I'm grateful for it, but it really isn't fair. 

The team in front of the Christmas tree

Our beautiful table

In the end, I have really enjoyed my holidays in Chad. I saved a free day, earned by working straight through various weekends to have Thanksgiving Thursday off, and then I pouted until my friends let me bring my dog to the party (then they all loved him, of course, because he is the best and so lovable). And I love Christmas anywhere. I can get into the spirit in the middle of the desert or enjoy the dulcet disco-beat tones of “Feliz Navidad” blaring through the speakers in our fanciest supermarket. I can make my puppy watch Hallmark Christmas movies with me because they are unintentionally hilarious and they make me think I could be a good actress if I suddenly became stunningly beautiful. I listen to Christmas music (and last minute agree to lead carols in church even though I'm sick so I end up croaking like a frog the whole time—thanks Tara for singing with me and over me) and bake cookies for people, and buy presents for my family. And really, as I was traveling around the last couple of weeks—to Koumra to install a water system at a hospital (while miserably sick for most of the trip) and to Dourbali to finish up ipad reporting for 2 wells out there)—I started thinking: Chad is a perfect Christmas place. We’ve got shepherds. We’ve got camels. We've got long-suffering donkeys. We’ve got a crazy despot on the throne and foreign militaries running around. We’ve got abject poverty and people who would let visitors stay in their barn and/or random government building if there is no room at the local inn (or if there isn’t any local inn available). And we’ve got people waiting to hear the Good News that “unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given…of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end.”

A long suffering donkey

Camel! And some wise kids.

Shepherds on a bike

Finally, as my Christmas gift to you, please enjoy the following photos:

Trying to see the submersible pump we installed at the PMI (Protection Maternelle et Infantile) in Koumra.
I couldn't see it, but Jeanpierre also made sure that I didn't fall down the well. He is a gentleman.

The beautiful Rhyan talking to a mother bringing in her child to be weighed.

The crew hanging at Jeanpierre's moringa factory in Koumra.

Rhyan, lovely traveling companion and Hilton connection, with moringa flowers.

She is clearly exhausted from weeks of planning for the Christmas Market,
and I was sick the whole weekend. We're still almost beautiful enough to play the lead in a Hallmark Christmas movie.

Life hack: when the hotel you're staying in for one night has a water heater but no towels,
take the hot(ish) shower and just use the bedsheet as a towel (make sure you shower in the morning before you leave, of course, so you don't have to sleep on wet sheets).

The lovely Absa, who is a famous movie star thanks to Neverthirst videos.
Whenever I go to Dourbali, she comes to say 'hi'.

King Cow. Seriously--he is wearing a tiara.
I don't have the photo of Djibrine 2 standing by him, but he came up to the tail.

So I found a pathetic tiny puppy.
I couldn't leave it to die in the street.
I could NOT. If I were capable of expressing human emotion in a normal female way,
I would have cried in the street over his miserable shivering body.
Instead, I brought it home, washed it, and convinced the guard that he really wanted a puppy.
He wanted to trade for Joe, but I said, "absolutely not," so he agreed to take Tiny Pathetic Puppy.
Joe was interested at first, but then he got super jealous, so I gave Tiny PP to the girls downstairs.
They played with him and then the guard took him home. He might not survive, but at least his last days will be happy ones.

SO SAD!!!! But he plumped up and was even wagging his tail
(after I protected him from Joe and he dried off after his bath).

 Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2018!

InstaTravels

A common sight, if you live in Chad. Or if you're Amish.

“It’s close,” he told us, “only 300km.”

“So why don’t we go and come back in one day?” asked Hervé who was graciously coming in during his vacation month, hoping to keep this trip short (don’t feel too sorry for him—he often comes in while he is on “vacation” because we have sometimes-functioning internet and AC and no children).

“Oh no,” said Djibrine, “It will take us at least 7 hours to get there.”

Now, if we were talking about driving somewhere in South Sudan, absolutely I would believe him. It’s taken me 12 hours to go 200km before. But Chad has a lot of paved roads, and it hasn’t yet gotten to be full on rainy season where soupy roads and newly-flowing rivers can delay traveling, usually because some idiot thinks he is going to be the one to successfully drive through the wadi, even though clearly, two other trucks tried and failed before him.

Example from another trip of someone
thinking his car is stronger than mud

 I offered a compromise: we plan to stay the night but if we make it in time to finish our work and get back in one day, then we come on home. This was acceptable to all involved, so the next day, with my expired but mostly-unnecessary-anyway travel permit, we embarked on our journey of 300km?  7 hours?

Of course, I pushed our ETD to 8am from 6am because, 8am is always better than 6am. Djibrine said he’d come by at 7:30 because for some reason, he was super-stressed about this 300km/7 hour trip. I was not. I told him to err on the side of 8am because I planned to run before we left, and I wanted to make sure I had enough daylight hours to do that because I’ve learned my lesson about running in the dark in certain places. There are limitations that one has to accept if one is a woman who does not own any pepper spray. As it turned out, I was able to run and be ready by 7am, so I texted Djibrine to come on over. Naturally, he turned up at 8:15. The best laid plans…he blamed his wife for not waking him up in time. He has two wives, though, so I don’t know how he ever gets any sleep.

 I like road trips. The only times I prefer to fly are when I have time constraints or when the alternative was the Mundri Distress. Ours started off great, albeit with a bit of a delay. We headed to the petrol station to fill up before the trip and bought some water, even though poor Djibrine was fasting and couldn’t partake. He insisted that we did though, and since Hervé was driving, we made sure he was well hydrated, while Djibrine went back to sleep in the backseat and I tried to take instagram videos for Neverthirst. I was soon called out for one of my dumb jokes on the instagram page, which is why I should not be trusted with social media, but since everyone has editing rights, they were able to re-serious the account.

This is an example of what it looks like to drive down the roads in South Sudan during rainy season,
except we don't need to use those cowardly giant cars.
We are brave enough to take these roads in decades-old Land Cruisers.
Monster trucks are for sissies.

Puttering along, we came to our first péage exiting N’Djamena. We’d been on the road for about 15 minutes at that point. We had just whipped out the 500CFA to pay the guy, when a motorcycle pulled up by our car. It was the man from the petrol station. We’d forgotten to pay him and he chased us down. Oops. Fortunately, he did not seem to harbor any ill-will towards us for that.

Trees full of birds

The trip was fairly typical for Chad—the first part of the trip started out nice and paved with jarring sections of potholes to make sure you don’t fall asleep. Throughout there are military checkpoints where you are either stopped and questioned and must present valid papers (that you write yourself before you leave) or the kindly soldiers might just wave you through. The likelihood of you being stopped increases if the weather is nice and you are female. If it’s hot and stopping your car means moving out of the shade, you will likely just be waved through.  Being a female only benefits if you need to be charming because your papers aren’t exactly up to date. Fortunately, Ramadan fasting was on our side, everyone was conserving energy, and no one really cared about our papers on our trip, so I didn’t have to be charming at all. It's easier for me to remain in my natural state.

Cow crossing.

Throughout the trip, I was supposed to be trying to do something called “Insta Stories” for our Neverthirst social media. Or it might have another official name, but as an elderly person, I’ve not gotten into Instagram on my own, being quite content with the limitations of Facebook, so I’m not super up on all the Insta-Stuff. I did have a quick lesson with Brandon on how to Insta Story, but in the real life of the field, it turns out that Chadian cell phone data options do not favor Insta-Anything. But I was already caught up in taking short videos of cool things we see here that you don’t see elsewhere—camel trains, market day, people in traditional clothes working in the fields or walking by the road, donkeys pulling carts, cows pulling plows, grass-roofed mud brick houses, trees full of white birds, and the general beauty of rainy season Chad. Of course the problem is that once you see something while you’re speeding down the road, you’ve usually missed your opportunity to film it. I’m not dedicated enough to the media to go back for the shots. Consequently, I ended up with lots of dumb videos, which I diligently posted to Instagram before being gently told later not to do that anymore. Sorry Insta-people! I feel this need to share photos and stories of people and places I’ve seen with others who haven’t had the same opportunities I’ve had, whether you want me to or not. Thus—this blog. I’ve done my duty, and no one is making you read this (except, Mom, you have to because it is your maternal obligation).

 My favorite part of the trip is always once we leave the paved road. That’s when the real adventure starts. In our case, we missed the road we were supposed to take several times. And by the time we got to that road, we’d already realized that this trip was neither 300km nor 7 hours. And it wasn’t entirely due to our not knowing the road.

We took a decent unpaved road to a town called Koudalwa. There we met with the chef du village and I told Djibrine that this better not be the place he wanted us to build a well because there were already several water points. Note: this was already 8 hours in and more than 400km. “No, no, this isn’t the place. We just wanted to talk to the chef. Now we will go on out to Badel.” Amanda: “And let’s go now because we are running out of daylight!”

This part of the trip was on much worse roads (still nothing on par with South Sudan), and we splashed through puddles and scraped against trees, smashing our way into the jungle (which is what the bush becomes during the rainy season). On the way we passed several villages and maybe 2 working water points. I particularly enjoyed driving by some villagers loading up a truck with piles of cotton.

“We have to stop!” I yelled, suddenly unconcerned about lack of daylight and my job. “I have to jump in the cotton!” Like most of my ideas, it was a brilliant one. Cotton is bouncy and soft, like what you imagine walking on a cloud would feel like until Science ruins your fun with Facts. Also entertaining, the men on the truck burst into song and dance for us, just because they are fun people. Caught up in the excitement of the moment, our security guard decides to shoot off his gun loudly, right in my ear. But even this annoyance and mild concern about gravitational pull on bullets could not keep me from joining in the fun—until Hervé yelled at me to get back in the car. But I really want to go back and put a well in that village too, so donate to Neverthirst already and tell them to use the money for wells in Chad. Do it now.

If you could see this photo Djibrine took of me
in the "LIVE" version that somehow shows up on my phone,
you can tell that I'm jumping and my hair is flying around,
and that kid is questioning my sanity, as one does.

Climbing out of the cotton pile-
it's up to my knees!

The men singing on top of the truck, with our trigger-happy soldier guy,
aka Monsieur Fastest Hands South of N'djamena, in blue in the front.
Hervé does not drive calmly and Monsieur Celebratory Bullets Rarely Kill People Right in Front of You
managed to hold on, while I amused everyone else in the car by checking to make sure he was still
there, every time we went over a particularly jarring bump.

We finally arrived at our destination about 30 minutes before sunset, significant because it’s Ramadan and people are breaking fast at sunset. People have been fasting from water and food all day. They are tired and ready to eat. But they graciously took me to their closest water point, which is not really in use much right now, as rains have brought green but not refilled the reservoirs. People in Badel go to holes dug in the riverbed and get water from there. Since the holes in the riverbed closest to them are now mostly dry, they are going another 5km beyond to find water.

Hawa shows us the proper way to get water.
Also, clearly this is not good water.
This is what they are drinking.
Go donate to Neverthirst.

The group with me agreed to pull up some water from the hole to show me the quality. At first there were only men with us, and a man gamely tried to get the water. I have a video of us all laughing at him as he dropped the bucket. A woman came out (presumably from the confines of the kitchen where she was putting the finishing touches on the Iftar meal) and showed him how to do it. It just proves the old adage, anything boys can do girls can do better. Or in this case the boy couldn’t actually do it and we had to call in a superior talent.

The water was predictably terrible and the people were predictably quite excited about the coming of an improved water source right in their village. We had a meeting about requirements and expectations, and then it was time to Iftar. Hervé and I sat by the car while everyone prayed and ate. I was a little surprised, but not upset that we didn’t get invited to join in the food. As soon as everyone finished, we got back in the car to head to the first bigger village where we were going to spend the night in the chef’s house.

We made it back, driving in the dark, stopping to wipe mud off the windscreen once or twice and checking to make sure that one tire was holding up (it barely made it). At the chef’s house we were offered a Ramadan meal and then laid down on the floor to sleep. I was also a bit surprised to be sleeping with the men, but at no point during this trip was I considered a proper female, so I guess it shouldn’t have been that surprising.

Iftar meal in Chad. Got to be honest, it is not my favorite.
I've never liked soup much because I prefer to chew food.
People always seem to want to break fast with soups here, though.
And giant spoons are for communal soup consumption.

 It wasn’t a super restful night, though, what with Hervé’s intense snoring and the 3am wake up call for pre-daylight eating. I was very impressed with how quickly Hervé fell asleep. Seriously, I always thought those people who lie down and are out right away are lying, but it seems like that is what happened with him. I mean, there was really no reason for pretend snoring in this situation, so I have to believe it must have been real. I ended up just getting up at 4am and then pushing everyone else to get up so we could leave by 5am. 

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Anyway, we made it home in time for me to join the ladies celebrating Minga’s birthday and watching Wonder Woman in the theatre here—made even better because we can openly bring in a large pan of brownies for movie-snack time. Chad is Freedom. Don’t you want to come visit?

On the way back, Hervé always stops to buy presents for his family.
He made me try this weird palm tree fruit.
It tastes like if you shredded some cardboard and mixed in a few raisins for flavor, with
the texture of those woodchips you put on the bottom of a hamster cage.
Djibrine is either concerned for me or wishing he weren't fasting so that he could eat one too.

Here is where I planned to insert several videos:

1) A video of a swarm of bugs splishing against our windshield. If you have the sound on you can hear their guts juicing out. It's melodic.

2) A video of the guy dropping the bucket into the hole and everyone laughing at him.

3) A video of the cotton men singing and dancing. Since I can't currently make those happen, please enjoy this closer photo of the cool dancers.

One possible way for you to see the videos is if Marian will upload them for me. A slightly smaller possibility is if the internet dude actually shows up tomorrow to fix our internet. But don't get too excited. We are on Day 3 of him promising to show up tomorrow and fix it right away.