Defeated

A few months ago I had a day when Chad defeated me. It was miserable hot here. I know people assume that it always is, but there are different levels of heat and this was a top level. My AC doesn’t work well (some may say that it doesn’t work at all, but I get hopeful sometimes), so I had fans on me (yes multiple fans) and every time I got up to leave the vicinity of the fans, I felt warning prickles in my skin before sweat immediately started pouring. Also upon getting up there was always a puddle of sweat wherever I had been sitting, on the other side of my body from the fans. The power was rarely on for a full day and almost never on two consecutive days. We were constantly having to use the generator, which means we were constantly having to put fuel in it and also repair it because it was always breaking down. Our generator uses diesel, which was a problem because there were constantly diesel shortages around town, which also affected my truck because it uses diesel too. 

In my mind, I'm really tall. Then I see photos like this.

When you’re constantly hot and sweating and can’t get away from the misery of it, you’re often also cranky—not just us weak foreigners either, because no one is immune to these temperatures. So hot, sweaty, cranky and of course—covered in dust because this is the Sahel.  

There was one particular day when I needed to leave the house to go take a kid to the hospital for a surgery he desperately needed that I’d promised to arrange for him. He and his father had come in from a rural village in the area where we have been doing water projects. The boy had a tumor on his genitals that had been there for years, slowly growing. He’d come into the city to get help once, but it was when the hospitals were on strike. Disappointed and discouraged, the family had given up on finding help for him. Fortunately, hospitals are not on strike anymore. We were able to find surgeons who could help him, and they told me that the tumor was from a parasite similar to the Guinea worm (look that up if you want nightmares) and he got it from dirty water. This was a good reminder to me of all the secondary consequences of lack of clean water—not only thirst and dysentery but tumors caused by parasites. And I don’t have to look up horrifying pictures on the internet because Chadians, made of sterner stuff than I am, love to send me scary photos of tumors and stab wounds and infections, which I am totally unqualified to do anything about so I call Claire usually. Although now sometimes I ask Manon, who worked on an ambulance in France. She is my neighbor living in the other house in my compound, from France, but as anti-French sentiment is high here, we are telling people she is from near Geneva (true) and letting them assume she’s Swiss. She’s wonderful anyway, and Joe, Pika and I love to have her around. Anyway, all of that was beside the point…

This kid was so tough and stayed so cheerful.

I taught him to make origami frogs and jump them into cups.

Everyone loves Manon, especially Joe and Pika

Back to the story, I was hot, sweaty, cranky, and needed diesel for my car and the generator (because we had no electricity). I had to pick up the kid to take him to the hospital that evening and was supposed to give blood too (O negative for the win!) though that got canceled because they ended up having enough. I decided to go out and get diesel, but I had to go by the ATM to get cash first. So I loaded Joe up in the truck (he loves a car ride) and went out to go run my errands, but there were workers outside digging a trench between the paved road and the dirt road that I live on. In order to get anywhere from my house, I need to get out to the paved road because the other side of my neighborhood is a river. I asked the guys what they were doing and how long it would take, and they grunted something about an internet cable (which if it HAS been put in, I have not benefited from it at all) and that they have no idea when they would finish. I wasn’t very nice to them, and then I was mad at myself for not being nice when they were doing manual labor in the hot sun probably while fasting (it was Ramadan). I went around the block to get to another road out, but I could see them digging that way too, so I realized that I needed to finish my errands quickly or I would get stuck. I dashed to the ATM, but there was no cash. I went to another one. Also no cash. I went to the fuel station—no diesel. I went to another one—no diesel. I’m now very low on fuel in my truck and have no money and I’m still hot and sweaty and cranky and now I’m also worried about getting back into my house. I decided to run back to my house so I didn’t get stuck outside with Joe. I made it back in from one block further down. 

Pika knighting Joe as Lord High Defender of the Compound against the Roof Cats

I parked my truck and let Joe out and then vented to our guard about how I’m now stuck—no money, no diesel, no way out of the neighborhood and what am I going to do? I said to him, “Chad has defeated me today!” 

Great to have a brother like this guy!

But then because I still had to get stuff done, I called my people. I called Mariassou to pick me up outside on the paved road to take me to an ATM. He came. He drove me around. We found zero (0) ATMs with cash. He took me to the office where Kadessou loaned me some money. I called Djibrine who can always find any random thing I ask him for to bring me some diesel. He popped over to my house with a jerrycan full of diesel he got from God knows where and helped me fill up my truck. He had extra for the generator. I now had money to pay him. He also brought me a roasted chicken with fried potatoes and hot sauce because he knows I love it and he likes me. 

Djibrine, looking like he's posing for Chadian GQ

We visited on the Eid and had lots of amazing food and fun.

Later that day the trench was covered over and I was able to get out and take the boy to the hospital where the nurses were very kind and friendly to him and his father, both of whom are completely illiterate and couldn’t even read the number on the door of their hospital room. Nesie and I sorted food and blankets for them. While we were there, Abiner and Sabit took Joe and Pika for their afternoon walk, without which they annoy everyone by running around the yard barking all night. 

Sabit takes such good care of my dogs

Manon, treating a foot wound Joe acquired in his eternal fight against the roof cats.

Since this blog is usually about funny things that happen or adventures I get to have, I thought it might be honest to admit that, while I do love living in Africa, I’m not always as tough as I hope you think I am. But as I look back on the craziness of that day, and how annoyed I was at everything and how I felt defeated by Chad and frustrated with how difficult it was just to do basic things, I realized that even when life in Chad sucks sometimes, I’m lucky to be there because I get to be with my wonderful Chadian friends who are Family to me—picking me up, loaning me money, bringing me diesel and chicken, walking my dogs. And the truth is that life is hard—here and everywhere else too. I have no regrets living here, even when I’m just a weak, whiny white girl. I’m thankful for the people I have around me who are always there for me and I’m thankful that I get to be here for them too sometimes.

Chad

Antani loves Joe enough to let him come into her house when we stop by to visit.
And Joe expects nothing less because he thinks he is a human and why should he wait in the car?

Antani prepared food for Joe as an honored guest since he doesn't take tea.

Spoiled dogs owned by one spoiled nasara.
Anina jalhaneen! Nous sommes vraiment gâtés.

Visitors Part Two, an even longer post about how traveling in Chad is never boring

One girl is drawing me a new tattoo with a pen
and the other kids are seeing if the white can rub off.
It can't-I've also tried.

Part 1 ended with photos of South Africa after I touched briefly on the subjects of traveling and dust. And to continue speaking of traveling and dust and its impact on The Visit of the Americans and One (1) Australian, Matt and Brandon were supposed to leave Thursday night to head back to the US because they didn’t want to spend two weekends away from their families (spoiler alert: they didn’t get their wish but it wasn’t my fault!). The rest of us were supposed to leave early Friday morning for Niger. Thursday night after a fun “last” dinner at our favorite pizza place in N’djamena (well-earned after the team spent the last few days eating lots of okra stew, goat meat, guinea fowl and baguettes with chocolate sauce), I dropped Matt and Brandon off at the airport. I went back to the Guest House where I had opted to stay with the team as it was closer to the airport and easier to stay all together than for me to go back and forth from my house. When we got to the Guest House, I had a call from Matt that he'd forgotten his covid test results in the Guest House. No problem. I send him a photo of it and it was accepted. I had figured we would have some issue like that, and foolishly thought that would be it.

Some photos from our time in Chad

Community well

Much loved football/soccer ball

Motorcycle ferry

When Tara wanted to get in the water,
I was her assistant, carrying her shoes, her subject's baby, 
and keeping her camera out of the water.

About 9pm I get a call from Matt that their flight is canceled. I had heard from Claire, who loves to follow flights because she’s cool like that, that it was likely canceled as Air France couldn’t manage to land as visibility was very hampered due to dust storms. (Also, let's be honest: it's Air France. They love canceling flights, but in this case Claire, who lives under the path of an airplane's descent into N'djamena, says they made several attempts to land before giving up.) They wanted me to come, but then they found someone who could translate for them who said that the airline was putting them all up in a hotel so I didn’t have to go pick them up. At about 11:20 I had another call from them saying that they don’t know where the English speaker went, but they had been waiting for over an hour and no one picked them up to go to the hotel. So I got up from bed where I had optimistically laid down to sleep before a 5am trip to the airport the next day, drove to the airport and found them and a few other people waiting for transportation to the hotel. The airport official (the one who wasn’t asleep in the chair) asked me if I would take people with me to the hotel. I said, “Are you going to pay me?” and he looked a bit scared, so I said I have to take my two people with me and I have room for two more. They sent just one guy with me who was diabetic so I had Matt and Brandon and a diabetic Tunisian in my truck as I tried to drive through very dusty dark streets to a hotel I’ve never been to before. I found it with some effort and got back to the Guest House around midnight. 

My attempt at a photo of driving through dust at night.

Early the next morning, the rest of the team and I went hopefully out to the airport at 5am. When we got there, we joined a line of people waiting outside the airport. I don’t like waiting in lines. So I went to go see why we were waiting. I saw a guy I know who works in the airport and asked for info. He told me that there were technical issues on the flight and it was canceled but we could be put on the flight for the next day. Mahesh, my favorite travel agent, confirmed this when I called and rebooked the flights for us. I took the team to the French bakery for some comfort croissants and coffee that wasn’t nescafé. Then I took them back to the Guest House, which I was told could still be used by us until Monday. Then Matt and Brandon called and wanted me to pick them up and figure out what was happening to their flight, so Jason and I went there and then took them out for comfort croissants. We also decided to move them to Guest House so everyone could be together. I spent the day getting meds for  Bob who wasn’t feeling well (thanks Claire and Brian--Guinebor Hospital people are my favourites!) and getting food for everyone to eat and rearranging flights and schedules and getting new covid test papers drawn up with new dates. Jason was great with the replanning for Niger. Kadessou was great arranging new airport drop offs. I didn’t book enough rooms at the Guest House so I decided to spend the last night in my house with my dogs, who were very happy about it. I left my truck at the Guest House and told Mariassou to pick me up at my house at 5:15 so we could get to the Guest House to pick up the rest of the travelers to catch our flight to Niger. Mahesh called and said to be sure to get there as early as possible, no later than 5:30, as due to the previous day’s cancellation this flight was double booked. 

This is about 11am dust behind the Chadian flag.
Pictures don't really capture it.

At 5:15 Mariassou hadn’t arrived. I gave him 5 minutes and then called. No answer. I called and called all his numbers. Around 5:25 he picks up. “I’m on my way,” he says. I press him a bit, “Where exactly are you?”He admits to oversleeping and not having left his house yet. It takes a good 15-20 minutes to get to my house from his (more if you get stuck on the bridge). I told him to meet me at the airport to get the key to my truck because I couldn’t wait for him to come. I had my guard go out to catch a motorcycle taxi for me. He finds one, ties my bag on the back, and we zip off to Team Guest House. We arrive a little after 5:30, and I overpay the guy and find everyone waiting outside the guest house for me with their luggage because no one read their messages to load up the truck, which was parked inside. We all troop inside, load up the truck and I zoom to the airport, dump them all off to save a place for us in the line while I parked. Then I joined them and we all pushed into the airport. We were near the front of the line when I realized that in a fit of trying to be responsible, I’d taken out receipts from the Chad trip to leave in my house so I could sort them when I got back. In that mass of papers was my covid test result. Jason gave me one of his previous covid test papers and using that paper, I got into the airport. Fortunately, unlike the time Ethiopian Airlines almost didn’t let me board because my covid test said M instead of F on it, they didn’t even notice that my paper had Jason’s name on it. And he is M and I’m F. Maybe we look alike even though he is definitely not American. He is Australian. Once inside, while waiting to check in, I called Mariassou and told him where to find my covid test in my house and to bring it with him when he got to the airport to pick up the key to my truck, as I didn’t think it would be as easy to sneak past the covid test checkers with Jason’s results in Niamey.

Photo from the back of the motorcycle taxi
on the way to the airport

Finally it was our turn to check in. Jason, Tara and Bob’s ticket info was all there. Mine wasn’t. I checked them in and then joined the queue of people harassing the ticketing agent for similar issues. Mahesh also called the guy, and as I was one of the first people in line thanks to Mahesh’s advice to arrive early, I was ultimately rebooked on the flight with everyone else, but there were about 15 minutes of intense stress about whether or not I should send the team without me. While I was in that 15 minutes of elevated heart rate, Mariassou had called that he had my paper and needed the car keys. I ran out to make the exchange as soon as my flight was rebooked (which involved the agent having me take a photo of his computer screen). 

Some photos from Niger

Our community worker teaching hand washing

Talking to a village chief, trying out my Hausa

Local cell phone charging operation,
not pictured is the little generator.
Phone charged to full for 100CFA.

At this point, I think we’re home free. We head upstairs to immigration. I wait for the group to go through. But wait! Jason and Bob’s visas are not in their passports. As Jason came from Australia and Bob came via Uganda, both places without Chadian Embassies, we had to get them visas on arrival, which is a process. Their passports were left with immigration when they arrived. Then while we were in Dourbali, Emelie went to immigration to pick up the passports and get them registered at the police station. Apparently immigration had not put the visas in their passports, but happily gave them to Emelie anyway. The police had proudly stamped the passports without noticing that there were no visas in there. But immigration at the airport noticed. They said there is nothing we can do. They have to go out to the ministry of immigration to get the visas or they can’t leave. I start talking to everyone in Arabic about all of our options. Most of them know me anyway as I travel more than most people in this country. I called Kadessou to call his General friend who works in immigration. While I’m calling and talking to everyone, an immigration lady comes to me and says in Arabic, “I like you. You are my sister. I will help you. Come. I’ll stamp their passports so they can leave.” She does this, out of what I presume is the goodness of her heart moved to help me because of the sisterly bond she feels for me. Then just before we leave, she says in French, “And how about a present for me for the help that I have given you?” Which, as someone with sisters, is totally something we would do. I buy Christmas tree ornaments from every country I visit for Joanna for being my POA and doing my taxes for me. And so I gave my Chadian Airport Sister a crisp $50 bill, which doesn’t mean that I condone bribery at an official level, but I was really done at this point. We made it all the way to our gate, boarded the plane and flew out on our tour of West Africa--N’djamena to Abuja (Nigeria) to Lomé (Togo) to Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) to Niamey, which is the only way to get to Niger, a country that borders Chad. I don’t think my heart rate went down until our second or third flight.

We made it on the plane!
I got everyone out of Chad successfully.

Matt and Brandon got out a little after us with many rebooked flights and a hotel stay in Paris. And poor Matt was pretty sick then too. Kadessou went to the airport with them as per my request, knowing that few people there speak English. He told me later that it was mass chaos and if he hadn’t been there to fight for them, they never would have gotten on that plane. N’djamena International Airport is always an exciting place to be.

Crowd of interested villagers

School in Niger

Kids going to school

After the stress of that day, the rest of the trip was fairly uneventful. Niger went smoothly, and the team were impressed by the modernity of the Niamey Airport, the presence of paved roads across most of the places we visited, electricity in the small town where we stayed, a shower in the outhouse instead of buckets, a very interested and involved local government whose help in managing and monitoring water points is crucial to the longterm functionality of the project, and they agreed with me that Niger does appear to be more developed than Chad in spite of its place at the bottom of the UN Human Development Index. This I tried to tell neverthirst when they started their campaign about working in Niger, the poorest country in the world according to the UN. But then Matt teased me that I just wanted to be in the poorest country in the world because it made me seem tougher and that does sound like something I would do so I decided to leave it to them to form their own opinions once they came to visit. And it turns out my opinion was not entirely based on my desire to live in a superlatively hard core country. But in spite of the advanced status of Niger, Jason’s Air France flight to get him back to Australia was cancelled and he had to stay an extra day in Niamey with us. It worked out though because he got to meet with the Prefet (regional government official) of the region where we are working and was given a turban and a leather Tuareg man purse. Everyone else’s travel schedule remained as replanned during our extra day in Chad (the Plan C version, I think, though maybe we were already on Plan D or E at that point), and I made it home and was one of the first people out of the airport, not being constrained by visitors who don't bring pens with them to fill out forms or people who don't have their passport numbers memorized or people who let everyone else get off the plane instead of standing up just before the seat belt sign goes out to make sure to be near the front of the plane when the doors finally open. And Mariassou brought Joe with him in the car to escort me home. So I was very happy for 10 minutes until i got to my house and found out that the Cameroonian bar next door was having a loud all night raucous party on the night I just wanted to sleep. If anyone has any ideas how to get a bar shut down, please let me know because I’ve tried all my ideas, and throwing sand over the wall at them is not making the impact I think it is because it’s still dust storm weather in Chad right now, and there is always sand in the air.

I love getting on planes via tunnel instead of bus.
Niger Airport has tunnels! So advanced

Joe was happy to see me.

Jason ready to Tuareg

Jason, the Prefet (who is a Tuareg) and his presents.
Always fun to get presents when you're already packed up. 

Tara as the Pied Piper, being followed by crowds of children
who are all fascinated by the drone.

Tara and Bob working hard
(not as hard as the women pounding grain, but you know--it's a living.)

Amanda not working hard.
As the assistant, I carried cameras and pretended
that I knew how to take a selfie with it.
"It's for the 'gram!" #theworldsmostexpensiveselfiestick

End of filming success photo!

Minutes later, I captured this gem:

I think we wore them out

How to do this.

Realizing how weak I am

I really loved having the Aussie back out and about.
He's unfailingly cheerful even when flights are canceled, he's feeling sick,
plans are messing up. He asks great questions. He makes great observations.
We are lucky to have him on the team.

He is also very good at taking photos.
He sent this one on the day when I made Tara sleep off her sickness at a hotel.
It made her crazy to be missing this moment.

I forgot about our car breaking down minutes after leaving Niamey.
Even in Niger things happen.

The whole crew with our Security Team

If I ever run for office, definitely I will need to recreate this pose.

Maybe not this one though.