Socializing

Fatime stuffing me with sweets.

Depending on the country you live in, you get one day or two days or three days holiday after Ramadan to celebrate the Eid (or Idul Fitri, the bastardized Bahasa version of the Arabic). This holiday was one I dreaded as a child because it meant I had to dress up in fluffy clothes and pinchy shoes with my hair twisted into painful curls to go house-to-house visiting my parents’ friends. We would sit awkwardly on their couches, eating Idul Fitri snacks, greeting hundreds of thousands of people (Java is one of the most densely populated islands on earth, and there are always hundreds of thousands of people everywhere, all the time) with hands pressed together, in the traditional way. I actually really liked the garlic peanuts and the little cheese cookies. I didn’t mind the orange powder juice we were served either. Also, as children without a TV, it was always kind of entertaining to watch other people’s TVs. But one never knew how long these visits were going to last or how many visits my out-going mother and her slightly more introverted husband would try to cram into one day, and I never liked being forced to wear a dress.

I think my parents realized the futility of trying to photograph
us all dressed up for the visits, so here is a recreation from memory.
Though I got bored drawing ruffles so imagine that Joanna and Marian's
dresses are appropriately bedazzled. Our hair is not naturally curly--
it was a result of maternal abuse.

A nice sample of some good Indonesian Idul Fitri treats.
I miss it a lot.

Since those days, I’ve lived in many other Muslim countries and forced myself to dress up and visit and eat cookies. It’s amazing how long the influence of your parents stays with you. (It’s also interesting to note things that didn’t stick, despite their best efforts, but that’s a topic for another day.)

I tried on Fatime's hair. How do I look? (FYI: I'm the one
in the grey shirt, in case you couldn't tell.)
Also, Fatime told me yesterday that she is going to get me
a "hat" like hers. I'm afraid she means a wig like this one,
in which case I might have to wear it in public for her sake.
Please understand that I'll only be culturally appropriating
African-style hair to make an African happy.

This year I only had one Eid visit, as opposed to the billions of visits I used to have in days of yore (thanks, Mom).  I wore a skirt, but as I buy my own shoes now, I do not currently own any pinchy ones. (If I have to wear shoes that cover my toes for an extended period of time, I will make you suffer with me as I whine incessantly about it.)

I actually had several Chadian visits over the holiday weekend, which is not normal for me, as my all-day job makes it hard for me to carve out time to build relationships outside of work, and also Introvert Amanda often resists most efforts to engage in social activities during time off. But these visits were nice because they were with people I like and they didn’t last long.

The last visit was to a colleague’s house. It was his birthday and I’ve started making cakes for everyone in the office to celebrate. People like it, and then I get to eat cake. Since his birthday was on a holiday, I just went over to his house. I also wanted an excuse to see his family because he has very cute kids, though the last time I went there, his oldest daughter looked at me and burst into tears. She didn’t stop crying until after I left (I mean, I hope she stopped then—as long as I was in the vicinity, she was greatly disturbed in spirit). This time we had fun hanging out and the littlest one came and sat in my lap and squeezed my pasty cheeks and poked my large nose, and I kissed her all over her little face. I also discussed borrowing one of Hervé’s puppies once it is born in a few months. One of his dogs is pregnant, and I want a puppy soooo much. I think if I borrow it and return it when I’m traveling, it should be ok, right? This is a good idea, right? Yes, it is. Shut up. I’m doing it. Anyway…

With Hervé and his two youngest girls who don't hate me.

Hervé's beautiful wife who was in a motorcycle accident after this
and broke her leg. Prayers for her quick recovery, please!

My Eid visit was fairly typical. I went to my friend’s house, greeted all her neighbors and friends, then went into her little room to chat and be stuffed with Chadian holiday sweets. My friend’s holiday sweets included lightly sweetened cookies with the appearance and texture of small roof tiles, some sweeter ones rolled in powdered sugar, and various fried crunchy pancake things. I ate some while I was there and then she stuffed a bucket full of more cookies and filled a plastic bag with the crunchy pancakes and handfuls of candies and two strawberry sodas. I had given her a small bag with some Hershey’s chocolate and some re-gifted jewelry. Not an even trade. In true Amanda-fashion, I ate significant amounts of these sweets, but I didn’t even make a dent. I gave the rest to another friend who has children and isn’t a Muslim, so probably hasn’t made her own stuff at her house.

Bucket of cookies after I'd eaten a few.
I returned it full of peanut butter cookies I made.
(I learned about returning containers with more food
from my mother. When I tried this with my neighbors in India,
I lost so hard. I could not keep up with all the great food they made me.)

But this is true hospitality that I’ve experienced in many countries around the world—being out-given by people who have less than I do. This level of generosity is humbling and inspiring. One of my other friends who visited me over the holiday weekend with two of her children came just to say ‘hi.’ I was sure she was coming to ask for money to fix the giant crack in her house that I’d seen the last time I was hanging out there. In fact, I wanted her to ask me for the money because I wanted to give it to her. Every rainy season there are people here who die when their mud houses collapse on them. My beautiful friend’s landlord is refusing to pay to fix this crack because he is planning to destroy the house and rebuild after the rainy season. In the meantime, he is leaving a family of women and children (her husband is in the military and is currently deployed to some middle of nowhere post) at risk. I ended up just giving her money even though she didn’t ask and she didn’t come for that. In fact, she just came to visit because I’d visited her and brought little presents from America, as I do because I grew up in Indonesia (oleh-olehku di mana, ya?) and also this is another one of those things my parents did that stuck. I brought little bubble toys for her kids, and I told them I’d make more bubbles for them if they ran out of the soap. (When I was a kid, I used to climb up on our roof and blow bubbles down on the heads of people walking by until they laughed or yelled at the weird little white girl to cut it out. So I have lots of bubble experience.) So the kids came over ready for more bubbles (which I provided) and Antani brought me a bucket full of peanut butter (homemade) and a bucket of freshly roasted peanuts (white and black ones from her hometown) and two mangos (ripe but not squishy, exactly the perfect way that mangos should be). And then SHE said to ME, “I can never out-give you.” And I laughed. And I ate half of the peanuts 5 minutes after she left (but she wouldn’t leave without washing the dishes while I was making bubbles).

The black peanuts are really good.
I think she added sugar to this peanut butter, so it is basically candy,
and I eat it with a spoon.

There isn't much of a point to this post. I just have some really nice friends. And I think that it's important to note that there are kind, generous people all over the world.

Someone gave me a bunch of these processed meats.
I gave a bunch away to this family already and they told me how much
they liked them. (Hey-to each his own, right? They could have some Hawaiian blood in them.)
I had one more and when I gave it to Abram, he was soooo excited. How cute is his face?
If you were concerned, he is not from a Muslim family, so the pork issue isn't a problem for him.
I did tell his mother so that she wouldn't let their Muslim neighbor kids accidentally eat it.

When you have a lovely friend who works at the Hilton,
she and the head chef let you try several ice cream flavors,
and promise to make coconut ice cream for you next.
This isn't related. I just wanted to brag a little.

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.

Field Trips

 The best field trip I ever went on in my life was the chocolate factory in Bandung. It was like Willy Wonka but nobody turned into a blueberry or was humiliated by an Oompa Loompa song. The factory workers made it their mission to stuff our fat foreign fingers with as much chocolate as we could hold. They also gave us plastic bags to hold our loot. And I also used the pristine white cap we were supposed to be wearing to keep our hair out of the vats of melting chocolate as a secondary container. To anyone who found a blonde hair in your Silver Queen circa 1994, I apologize.  Probably most parents, like mine, confiscated those plastic bags from their children’s jittery hands as soon as they picked us up from school, but possibly many children, like myself, had made a significant dent in their contents before handing them over. My ability to consume incredibly large amounts of sugary treats in one go has been with me from childhood.

Silver Queens of the Modern Era

These days, I’m still going on field trips, though they don’t generally involve chocolate anymore, as chocolate here melts as soon as you take it out of the refrigerator. This trip I subsisted on mangos and Smurf gummies that I bought in Modern Market. (I hold on to a secret hope that whenever I check out at Modern Market, the ladies think I’m buying supplies for a birthday party for a six-year-old. I mean, how rude of them to assume that I’m going to eat all of the gummies and chips and cookies myself?!) My most recent trip with the DONG (Direction des Organisations Non-Gouvernementales) was to visit our projects out east to for the DONG to see what we have accomplished. Yes, I did laugh the first time I got the DONG report, because everyone has a little bit of 12 year old boy humor in them, but now I’m starting to get over it. I understand if you have not reached the point of maturity yet, and you need to laugh about my trip with the DONG. Take your time and come back later. Or never. Your choice.

The view on Chadian road trips.

A good portion of this trip was spent in the car. I don’t mind car trips. I like being able to see the people and the scenery. As the sole girl on this excursion (as per usual), I was given the front seat, which I graciously accepted. And then I not-so-graciously accepted for everyone’s bags to sit under and upon my feet. Just like men to not want to carry their stuff so they give it to their ladies to put in their purse. Joke’s on them though: I never carry a purse. I would-I just can’t get around to buying one, so I’ve been carrying a pouch that had socks and toothbrush in it from a trip on Turkish Air a few months ago. Then that ripped, so I found another small wallet, and then that zipper broke, so I fixed it with a paperclip. I have also not been robbed recently, so I think there is a connection with carrying money in shabby pouches and not being mugged.

My friend at the SECADEV lodge in Adré.
He slept outside my bedroom.

Because of how much time we spent in the car, the night we got back I fell asleep to one of the songs we heard multiple times on that journey, as we cycled through all of the music on our driver’s flash drive. The song I fell asleep to had a refrain that said, “Fi Juba, ajmal medina fi duniya.” I was not aware that anyone classified Juba as “the most beautiful city in the world,” but apparently this guy has, and Chadians love this song, probably because none of them has ever been to Juba. Ok, I’ll stop maligning Juba—it’s not bad, and there are lots of lovable people there.

 

A lovable Kenyan driller in Chad, who lived and worked
in South Sudan during the height of the war,
and he can tell stories.

Now I’ll malign Enrique Iglesias. We were assaulted by several of his songs thanks to the flash-drive. I pondered the lyrics to one particular gem of a song, where he laments the fact that he is in love with someone who doesn’t return his love anymore. The line “Do you know what it feels like to be the last one to know the lock on the door has changed?” was particularly telling about his relationship with this woman. If she broke up with him as fast as possible and changed the locks on the door, she doesn’t just not love him anymore: she never wants to see him again and is clearly so afraid of him that she does not want him to be able to have the ability to get into her house anymore. I hope he soon knows what it feels like to be slapped with a restraining order.  Worse even than Enrique, worst boyfriend ever, was the medley of country songs that followed. I don’t know who the singer was because I try to avoid the country music genre at all costs. I know that it is traditionally accepted for many of my generation to despise country music, and I hate to go with the flow, but it really grates on me. I like bluegrass though…so I’m still not like everyone else! Anyway, I want to say this singer was Shania Twain because I find her particularly pernicious, and not just because she is Canadian. With time and distance from South Sudanese immigration officials, my grudge against Canada is easing. Somehow I survived Shania AND South Sudan.

Man and donkey.
Not pictured: Enrique Iglesias

The music selection wasn’t all bad. I found some interesting Congolese singers I didn’t know about before (Koffi Olomide and Cindy le Coeur) that I will be adding to my music collection. After all, it was one such trip where I learned about Magic System, band of cool Ivorian dudes who is a staple on my play lists now and has taught me lots of important French lingo.

The hazards of rainy season road trips.
Note: this is NOT our car, but our car passed through successfully
the previous day. I'm not sure how this happened.

Kandos telling me not to take a picture while I take a picture.
Too late.
We are good friends.

And the driver and I had some good times. One night in the field, I asked to borrow a knife to cut the mangos Kandos bought for me on the way there because I am too sophisticated to chew off the peel with my teeth. And also lazy.  They came back with a huge dagger, which was not actually great for peeling mangos, but would have been good protection if we had been attacked by Robin Hood bandits with bows and arrows or swords or something. As I was joking about protecting the group with my dagger, the driver said to me, “No. You are not holding that right. If you hold it like that, your attacker can take it away from you.” (Clearly, he saw something in me that led him to believe that I have the potential to be a great dagger-fighter.) He then gave me a long lecture about the proper way to use a knife in a fight. “I always have a knife with me,” he said, patting his thigh knowingly. “You have one with you right now?!” I said. “Well, I actually left it back at the lodge while we were eating, but I have it. You never know when you need to protect yourself.” Clearly.

Demonstrating the proper way to hold a knife.
Except that you can't really tell.

Of course, a knife won’t protect you from bad drivers. After a near miss with a bus that was driving straight at us, taking up two lanes, he turned to me and said, “No! You cannot die. You haven’t had children yet! You need to have at least 4- a boy that looks like his father and a girl that looks like her mother and a boy that looks like both parents and a girl that looks like both parents.” I think he has thought through this a lot farther than I have.

The Chef du Canton telling us that IAS
came at the exact moment they needed us.

As I said, most of my trip was spent in the company of other men. This is a male-oriented field, mostly. Since it’s Ramadan, we didn’t have to stop for lunch and I didn’t eat in front of anyone. So we would break fast together every night. It was usually me and 5-11 men. It’s not bad eating with large groups of men because even though at least one of them told me I need to get fatter so that I can be beautiful, they do not pressure you to eat like women do. I think they are actually secretly hoping you don’t eat much. And I don’t worry about not liking some of the food because none of them were the ones who made it. So not bad.

Break fast meal in Abeche

Break fast meal in Adré--each with his own spoon.

But I did jump at the chance to hang out with women at the wells and when visiting the self help groups. They were all really fun to talk to, understanding my Sudanese Arabic, and sensing my need for female companionship. While well drillers tend to be male, well-users tend to be female. So we met plenty of ladies in the field.

Hanging with the ladies. I'm sure you can't tell which is me.
Alifa got some good photos of me talking with them, but
he has not sent them to me yet.

I like the kids too--who get serious when you take a photo,
and then rush over laughing to see themselves.

My favorite photo.
Baby Mohamed kept making hilarious faces at me.
His mom thought it was really funny too.

Our last day was to be all with ladies, many of whom I have met previously on other visits, and I was looking forward to it, but at the last minute the DONG rep decided we would skip this last day and go straight back to N’Djamena that night. So we did, breaking fast on the way by consuming a large goat together. I ate about 5 pieces of that goat. I got way behind because piece number 3 took 15 minutes to chew. 

And who was so happy to see me arrive home? Felix, the cat who did not pee on anything while I was gone because I took precautions: