Loud System Sound Speaker

Got a bit of extra time with these kids, 
thanks President Deby

While in the car with my sister on the way to somewhere, probably a covid test, I forgot how to order words in sentences, but context clues still allowed the conversation to flow. Or possibly genetic brain connections for siblings. But in true sibling fashion, Marian decided she wanted to steal the new words that I had so cleverly strung together for her own creative writing, and I knew I had to act fast and use it first. So this is me, several weeks later, after she’s posted multiple times on her blog and instagram, acting not fast at all. And it is relevant because in spite of a 20:00-5:00 city-wide curfew, local bars have started up their loud system sound speakers at 21:00, and it has been annoying me. Nighttime silence is the only good thing about the pandemic. Why are you taking that away from me with your rule breaking? Wear your masks on your chin, and I will not be the busybody saying anything to you about it, as I’m sure you already know that it is supposed to cover your nose (in French it is literally called a nose-hider), but I will call the police on your after-hours party if I weren’t sure that they were already there and 4 drinks in. 

Weird Mickey Mouse ice cream cones

Recipe from Micah's Disney cookbook

Creative use of available materials,
credit: Auntie

Here is your 2021 update for the 3 people who care (and probably already know): I’m back in Chad. I would once again like to use this moment to advocate for last minute ticket-buying. So far there are only two of us who firmly believe in this system: Leif and me. The rest of you are illogical and/or infrequent travelers. Of course Leif was too last year and it nearly killed him to be stuck in Sweden for almost an entire year. He lives in a beautiful 100 year old red farmhouse on the banks of a picturesque lake in central Sweden, but he is desperate to stay in an always-dusty, cement house with roof rats so we can get stuff done here in Chad. Then he pops over to Sudan to get stuff done there while texting me about a plan we have to get to Somaliland in the near future. I want to be him when I grow up, minus the 17 grandchildren because I just don’t have enough time to make that happen. He bought his ticket to Sudan the day before he left Chad. Once when I was in Sudan, and he was buying me a ticket to Kenya or Uganda or somewhere, he bought it for me the day before I left, and said, “I’m glad you’re not like the other people in the Head Office in Sweden. They always get so worried if they don’t have their ticket in hand before they leave.” 

Here is Leif fixing my ceiling fan.

Here is a meme my sister sent me with the caption:
Amanda buying plane tickets

Now I have neverthirst Head Office people worrying about my ticket-buying. They do not share Leif’s and my laid-back attitude towards trip planning. This didn’t stop them from adding an extra donor meeting into my America time at the last minute. I did not mind that because the donor is a friend of mine, and also because last minute changes rarely bother me. It did mean that I needed to change my return ticket back to Chad. True to form, I waited until near to last minute. I did send an inquiry to the travel agent who has become my go-to in Chad because I try to buy tickets online and then the internet messes up at a crucial spot and I get annoyed. Mahesh (lovely Indian guy who did not do his part to keep the Indian restaurant open in N’djamena when I was gone on some misguided trips a few years ago and it closed for lack of my business) immediately got back to me and gave me some ticket change options and the change fee. I left it for a few days, and then heard that Chad had decided to close the borders and the airport for one week “renewable” (which is a clause they add in every single decree to allow for open-endedness that gives them an easy flexibility and keeps everyone else on the brink of uncertain insanity). My original return ticket was in that airport closure window, which means that my ticket was canceled by the airline, and I didn’t have to pay a change fee when I rebooked. If I had rebooked before the airport closure, properly in advance like a good time-conscious Westerner, then I would have had to pay the change fee. Procrastination saves money! And now, Chad, please open back up to the Brits--they're really not as dangerous as you might think, and many of them are really nice people and have genuinely put their Africa colonizing (colonising) days behind them. Claire needs to come back, and I really need her to come back too because I miss her and I already ate all the gummy bears I brought with me from America.

President Deby thinking about closing the airport indefinitely.

President D probably doesn't know about the Airport Cat
who guards the luggage conveyor belt, but the Cat knows
that his presence is crucial to the smooth functioning of luggage retrieval.

"Why is the nasara taking pictures of the cat?"
"I don't know, maybe she wants to take it home with her."
But I told them no because I already have two dogs.

Cat close up

Anyway, when they opened the airport two weeks later, I was on one of the first flights back. Annoyingly they changed the covid test dates of validity and that meant I had to get another test as the first one was no longer valid, and I had to do some intense searches for 24-hour PCR tests. There is a shortage of those in the US. Why is it such a big country? Finally I found one grâce à une colleague in Alabama who has connections. They charged me $250 and I had to do the test myself. Definitely a rip off. I’m sure I did not stick the thing as deeply into my nose as a professional would have. At any rate, the test was negative and I made it back to Chad where I mostly followed vague and inconsistent government quarantine procedures, but people came to visit me at my house anyway. I busted out a tiny bit early to help Leif get his covid test before he traveled to Sudan. We both continue to defy the odds and remain impossibly healthy. It is our carefree attitude towards life, probably. 

The kids excited to watch me covid test

$250 for this

$30 for this

Wear your iphone Apple print robe
when you go pick up your results.
(You may have to zoom in, but it's the cool guy in the hat on the right.)

It is good to be back. My dogs were so happy to see me and get taken out for walks again. No one else wants to take them because they like to be in charge of where we go. Pika MUST bark ferociously at any dog who looks at her. Joe doesn’t usually pull, but he hasn’t been walking in a while, and I think he’s afraid that every walk will be his last, and so he wants to make sure he sees everything. But he is getting better. Pika is getting a bit less barky because I’m bringing a small spray bottle and that seems to surprise her into silence. She’s been a bit ill lately, and the Chadian vet and I have had fun looking up DIY vet videos on youtube. He said, “You know, my education was mostly about camels and goats and cattle. We never studied dogs. I need to get a smart phone so I can learn more things about dogs.” If anyone know a vet who wants to offer online courses to Chadian vets who want to learn about dogs, let me know. I now know how to say “express the anal sacs” in French so I can translate. 

Pika stole my butter and ate it. 
Maybe that's why she is sick?

Just before Christmas, while out walking Joe and Pika,
Joe snatched a sneaky chicken I didn't see hiding in the bushes.
He has strong hunting instincts. The chicken met a swift violent death in front of her babies.
I told bystanders to get the owner so I could pay. Owner came and said it was a very
special and precious chicken, but he knows my dogs are usually nice dogs and I can pay him
whatever I think is fair. I called a friend for advice, and she told me what to pay but told me
to go back to the scene of the crime and bring the body back so we could make use of it.
I didn't want to reward Joe for his bad behavior, but I also didn't want to be charged 
multiple times for one chicken, so I went back to get the body. There we were met by many young men
who had nothing to do with the situation. They told the owner that I should have paid 4x the amount that I paid and also made sure that all of the chicken's future children had a college fund. They said it in Arabic,
so I also yelled at them in Arabic to butt out. I had had a very long day. They butted out, but the owner,
who had previously been happy with the fair amount that I paid him for his chicken,
suddenly got a call from his uncle, the REAL owner, who said that when chickens are killed
under violent circumstances, there is a 12% increase in payment for their deaths. A quick usage of the
calculator app on my phone, showed him that I had already paid him over 12% more than the chicken was worth. Indeed, everyone before the group of irrelevant interested young men had told me that I had been generous. My guard told me to go inside and stop making things worse and he handled the situation.
I've not seen the kid again since then. And I had a dead chicken in my fridge for 2 days.
Eventually the chicken was prepared and the dogs feasted on the bounty of Joe's successful hunt.
I couldn't find a chicken toy in Walmart, so I got the duck toy, hoping to satisfy Joe's interest in poultry
with a fake bird. He remains uninterested in the fake bird, but Pika likes it.

My other dog concern has been the rats in the roof of the house where Leif stays. He didn’t complain (much) about the rats, but we have the regional director coming in a few days and he wants to stay at that house. It’s not a fancy house, but we rent it, and he wants to get our money’s worth. So he will stay there. I suggested a nicer guesthouse, but he didn’t want that. And I know he can take it—while I’m pretty sure that he views Leif’s and my last-minute lifestyle choices and haphazard administrative skills to be recklessly irresponsible, he is a tough Kiwi who lives in Niger, and he can hack it. But we wanted to get rid of the rats anyway. The house owner said he would take care of it, and he sent us a bag of rat poison. Since I believe that is what killed Flip and made Joe very ill, I am paranoid about it. But it seemed our only option. So Danem and I bought some cucumbers (crack for rats here apparently), covered them with rat poison, and Danem climbed up into the roof space and chucked poisoned cucumbers all over like a crazed fairy tale step mother whose mirror just told her she is NOT the fairest of them all. And then we waited. In total 6 poisoned rats fell out the side of the roof over the course of a day or so. I kept Joe inside with Pika and me all night in case more came out while the guards slept and he ate one, got sick and died. Joe hates being inside at night. I used to try to get him to come back in and sleep inside, but whenever I go out to try to call him in, he goes full alert, runs to one corner of the yard and barks loudly. Then he runs to the other corner and barks again. Then he looks at me to tell me that he is just too busy protecting our domain and can’t possibly be bothered to come in right now. Antani says, “Amanda, that is his job as a dog. Let him do his job.” So I do, usually. But I didn’t want him rat poisoned again. He spent the night barking in my face, trying to force me to get up and let him out, but I stayed strong. But I only lasted one night like that. The next night I let him sleep outside. By that time we hadn’t had any more dead rats in several hours, and we’ve not had any more since then. I know at some point we need to go up to the attic to see if there are any bodies remaining, but I’ve not done that yet. Leif said the rats seemed to be gone, so we will hope that our efforts were successful.

Danem and the poisoned cucumbers

I knew he would never let me actually do the job,
but I like to climb things so I also went up.

I locked Pika and Joe out of the house
while we were poisoning rats,
and she cried like she was dying,
which she would have done if she had eaten rat poison.

And that’s the news for now. But there should be more soon because I’m representing Emelie’s fiancé in her dowry ceremony on Friday, and I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’ve been told to say nothing but what people tell me to say. And also to bring all the stuff for the ceremony that she has been storing in my house. And I was told to say nothing after I made several jokes about things that I wanted to say, and she laughed kindly before demanding complete silence and my best behavior for the ceremony. I will try. But I did laugh at her when she asked me if I had purple heels to match the dress she is having made for me to wear. No, I definitely do not own any purple shoes. 

This blog is over except for some photos for the interested. Many of these I posted on my new instagram account. I joined up to support a budding authoress, the talented Marian Frizzell, as she builds an online presence to convince someone to publish her novel, which I read and really liked. You should all go follow her on Instagram. I've also discovered that I, person who wears all her clothes when it is less than 25C out, love watching people climb up ice bergs and dive into slightly frozen lakes, so I'm following Marian and every Nordic country account that I find. I also like the surf and scuba dive accounts because I live in the desert. It's always good to have a new time waster in one's life, isn't it? What else would I do with all this time?

Rosie was not invited to the big kid birthday party
at the trampoline park, so we went for coffee--
well, only Marian had coffee, Rosie had hot chocolate and I had tea.
And Rosie had Attitude. As she always does.

I only like cooking for people who appreciate it.
The bro in law loves these deep fried Indonesian snacks
that I always make on New Year (bala-bala).
Charis wanted to help. She was unsure if she would like eating them though.

You have to get messy to make these.

We didn't make enough. Once the girls decided
that they liked them, they went fast.

Ah, yes, bala-bala in front of a roaring fire...
classic picture of homey coziness.

A few days later in a country where the sun shines hot,
Joe lurks under the table, waiting for Emelie to get back
so that we can start the party already and eat all the food she cooked.

Kadessou is the new Country Director for IAS Chad.
Leif is going to retire, meaning that he has more time to run around the world
doing even more projects. We have a lot planned.

Joe and Pika watch anxiously for any dropped morsel of food.

Emelie shows off the purple coat IAS Chad office
had made for Britt (Leif's wonderful, long-suffering wife).

A camel-skin briefcase for Leif.
I think he likes it.

Goodbye from Joe and Pika. Go do something important:
Save the whales, get a snack, adopt a puppy.

Corona-running, Puppies, Videos, Building Projects, Got Out of Jail (Probably Not Free) Parties, Life

I didn't want the first photo to be me in a face mask
because we have too many of those in the world,
so here are the puppies instead

The face mask rule is back. Government is issuing dire warnings to people who don’t wear them at all times in public. Emelie shows up at the office 3 days after this public announcement, “What? That was serious? I don’t have a face mask.”

The first day of Mandatory Face Mask, I dutifully put mine on to go out for a nice morning jog. I walked out to my starting place and watched a couple of face mask-less guys trot by on their run. I yelled through my mask to ask where their masks were and they said, “It’s not a problem—we’re running right now. We will wear them afterward.”

Because it was my first day of Face Mask Required and I had read the dire threats of jail and fines, I kept mine on. By mile 3.5 I was feeling light-headed from inadequate oxygen-intake, and 80%  (according to scientific analysis) of all runners I passed were not wearing face masks. I pulled mine down and let it bounce around my neck and finished my run while breathing in the fresh dusty air of N’djamena like all the other running rebels, feeling like a dental patient with one of those bibs on to catch the drool.

Face mask running

My very-cool African fabric face mask, which reminds me
of one of my favorite Chadian memes...

When you go to pick up your clothes from the tailor and see that
everyone there is wearing a face mask made from your material. 😆

While in the past, I would have been one of maybe 3 morning runners, the stadium where people jog around in circles like hamsters has been closed because of coronavirus, so people are experimenting with street running. I don’t mind this because there aren’t really that many of them, I like passing people, and Chadians are mostly very encouraging when they see runners, yelling “courage!” at you so you don’t feel you need to stop and die by the side of the road—Henry admits to getting a burst of energy at the end of our first 4 mile run together. “That ‘courage’ really pushed me,” he told me. Yes, as a woman running, I’ve had the occasional rude comment that makes me consider using the pepper spray Annie gave me a few years ago (thanks, Annie!), but I’ve had many more “courages” yelled than otherwise. And also a few “ni haos” because somehow I look Chinese? I guess you can take the girl out of Asia, but her blue eyes and mousy brown hair will always tell you that she is probably Chinese.

Just a Chinese girl driving in her car with a puppy

Since being corona-stuck together, Henry, my Kenyan coworker mentioned above, and I have been running together sometimes, often with Joe. Joe is great when you are just starting to run because he gives you bursts of speed when he sees a goat or cow on the road in front of him, and every 5 minutes or so, he gets tired of running and MUST stop to smell the nearest poop—cow, dog, goat, human (yes—many of my neighbors do not have toilets in their homes, it’s part of why I’m here, but talking about poop is less socially acceptable than talking about water, so you may not have known that).  So you get lots of breaks with Joe, while also moments of sprinting. Henry likes to hold the leash (he loves Joe, just like every sane person who has ever met him) so he also gets an arm work-out, holding Joe back from attacking snobby goats that taunt him with their tasty freedom.

Love this photo of the puppy trying to walk Joe because
Joe's face cracks me up!

Thanks to all his great workouts with me, Henry was able to fulfill his duty as a Kenyan and win the 5k race I held for Neverthirst. I was very proud of him, though I had been planning to win myself. When I got to the halfway mark and couldn’t see any of my friends and colleagues behind me, I decided that I should go back and make sure that everyone knew where they were going. And I realized it was one of those moments when I needed to quell my competitive instincts and make sure that Emelie did not die on her first attempt at a 5k. Good news: she did not. But she did hobble around for another 3 days after that, saying her whole body hurt and she had to hold on to things to ease herself into a chair or pull her body out of the chair. Henry and I recommended continuing an exercise program at a reduced scale, but by the time she felt better she said she didn’t want to feel that way again, and so I do not think Emelie will be starting an Instagram Exercise Influencer account any time soon.

Note: one of these guys was running in flipflops and others in dress shoes,
so winning this race would never have been a testimony to my superiority,
but asics might be able to make a commercial about how their shoes
are easier to run in than flipflops.

If you or anyone you know wants to do a 5k for Neverthirst, find out more about that here (deadline is May 16-I think): https://www.neverthirstwater.org/5k

This is unrelated to this post,
but I thought I'd pass along this helpful solution
 in case you are ever in the same situation.

In other news, my next door neighbor was arrested for running an illegal bar next door to my house. I realized this while scrolling mindlessly through Facebook, as one does, and suddenly noticed there was a photo of my house that I hadn’t posted. I read the article, which included a clever pun mocking the name of the bar, and was so excited that the bane of my existence was closed. No more loud raucous parties and drunk men hanging about! Until last week, when I thought I heard noises, but I ignored them, thinking it was my imagination. When I saw the balloon in my front yard the next day, I figured something must have happened there. The guard told me the party was so loud, he went over to tell them to turn it down. I’m guessing she was celebrating getting out of jail by throwing a drunken party for her and her friends—still illegal, but you can’t keep her down! Or maybe now she knows who she has to bribe to keep her fake liquor license…who knows? At least she can’t play music over speakers and I can drown out drunken singing with my fan.

Partying with Joe

If you are interested in reading the article or you want to see what my gate and my neighbor's gate looks like, go here (my house is the green gate): https://tchadinfos.com/faits-divers/fait-divers-fermeture-dun-debit-de-boisson-clandestin-a-ndjamena/

Another neighbor's house that says in French on one side and Arabic on the other:
"Forbidden to enter in here Corona" and the Arabic side politely adds 'for your health and our health.'
Henry and I are wondering if this is an anti-theft policy (see how they casually leave the door open) or what.

Finally, this past month has seen an increase in videos on my phone, not just the videos I’ve taken of the puppies, but also because I’ve filmed some for Neverthirst. Some of them they aren’t using, as they were probably too terrible for the internet, and others are mashed into a video for monthly partners. So if you want to see that one, you need to go be a monthly partner with Neverthirst because it is EXCLUSIVE CONTENT. It was filmed over the course of a day, traveling to Dourbali, hanging with Moussa and his family, shamelessly bribing kids to stay in the 113/45 degree heat with candy. They didn’t have to stay too long, but I definitely felt bad every time I screwed up a take. And then when the phone overheated because it was too hot, I had to go sit in the car with the AC cranked up, trying to cool it down so that it would turn on again.

It seems I talk with my hands a bit.

The new government official who likes us
(the former one who didn't was voted out in a few months--power of democracy!)

Goat on a motorbike--happy Ramadan!

With Nadji and family in front of their new house.
I brought the puppy with me for the kids to play with.
There was much happiness.

So that’s life these days—running, sweating, working at the office, wearing face masks sometimes, planning how to report my neighbor to the police, trying to fix my shower with my Swiss army knife (didn’t mention that, it’s an on-going saga), and still no consensus on names for the puppy. Henry has given me some good Swahili and Luo options, as well as some new things to yell at mjinga drivers on the road, so I basically speak Swahili now, but he still calls the Puppy “TP” for “Tiny Puppy” and the fact that this is American slang for toilet paper in these trying times of toilet paper shortage (for you—we are still fine here) is not lost on us. Please vote on the following names and I may or may not actually choose a name for her.

1.     Tiny Puppy, aka TP

2.     Puppiko - Emelie’s preference because she thinks I called her that one time, which is possible because I say lots of things in a high squeaky voice when I am talking to a small adorable creature.

3.     Kakilé - Moussa’s preference as it means “beware of danger” in Fulfulde and this dog is afraid of nothing and no one and loves a good fight.

4.     Kogo  - Ngambaye for ‘smile’ (Ngambaye is a local tribal language that most of my colleagues speak)

5.     Bishi – Ngambaye for dog, which means all the Ngambayes say “No, don’t call her that. That is what she IS, it's not a name.”

6.     Nasara – local term for ‘white person’ which I think is funny, but may confuse her when I take her on walks as people always yell ‘nasara, nasara’ at me when I’m out.

7.     Kim – for a tribe here that is known for always running TO a fight and never from it. But this could be problematic if a Kim is offended by me naming my dog after his or her tribe as you don’t want to mess with a Kim. They might not realize that I think of it as a compliment, though my friend who is a Kim did laugh when I told him.

8.     Cheka – Swahili for ‘smile’ but Victor (also Kenyan) believes that we should not pick a Swahili name for a Chadian puppy.

9.     Msupa is Swahili for ‘pretty, cute thing’ says Henry, but since the Puppy has started biting ankles and has ripped some of Henry’s trousers, he hasn’t been too keen to call her this.

10. Kwach is Luo (a Kenyan tribe—Henry’s tribe) for ‘tiger,’ so said Henry when he suggested it to me because we know that Puppy is ferocious. When I challenged him on why the Luo would have a word for ‘tiger’ when they don’t actually have tigers in Kenya, he specified that they use it for all types of big cats—panthers, cheetahs, the mythical tiger, etc.

11. Pika is the suggestion from Antani’s kids who heard it on TV. I’m wondering if Pokemon shows on TV here possibly?

12. Zilla, short for Godzilla, which is Claire’s preference. She told me the other day that she is tired of me not choosing a name for the puppy, she’s worried that it will be traumatised (British) and so she has arbitrarily decided to call her “Zilla.”

13. There have been many more suggestions, thanks to my nieces and nephews (I liked ‘Sharky’  and ‘Raptor’ because I have been bitten a lot), but feel free to write in your suggestions and add to the impossibility of picking a name for my poor confused fierce ball of teething energy.

Here are some photos so you can see her personality, to help you with your decision.

That's her, squeezed in the middle of York and Joe.

All three dogs wiped out after destroying my house.

On a Masai blanket from Kenya that Jack and his fiancée gave me.
You could make a case for naming her something in Swahili.

Sound asleep in Henry's arms. He likes her, but Joe is his favorite.

I sent this photo to Emelie so she would take Shalom off the list
of possible names for the Puppy. She agreed, but says if I had named
her Shalom from the first, she would never have turned out like this.

I was worried about how the dogs' water bowl was always empty.
I felt really bad that they were always so thirsty and I wasn't on top of it.
Then I saw Puppy splash all the water out of the bowl.
I got her a bigger bowl and she decided to relax in the bath with the emoji of a glass of wine,
which I added to the photo because she is so classy, and I am hilarious.

Why haven't you picked a name for me yet, human?

And she does love stealing the toilet paper,
chewing it up and leaving bits of it all over the house.

"Hehehe, but I'm cute!"

I love them so much.
Also, the Chadian soldier who gave me the puppy told me yesterday
that he is going to give me the other dog that I originally wanted,
but don't worry--I already named him Flip.
And there is still room for him on the bed after I de-tick him.