The Internet is Back!

It hasn’t been too long since I’ve written on this thing, and I like to space things out so that I can really lean in to my long-winded style of writing that helps to weed out the readers with short attention spans. Today, however, there is not much else to do considering that the internet/phone networks in Chad are currently blocked due to political conflict, which needs to be done in secret without unhelpful social media posts from those who don’t agree with the current regime. Naturally, easiest thing is just to make sure that no one can talk to anyone who is not right next to them to avoid anyone discussing topics that the Marshal of Chad would prefer to remain undiscussed.  This seems like a great idea in theory, but it ignores the fact that phone technology is still relatively new, word of mouth has been working well for for thousands of years, and people already know exactly what is going on (I’ve been told by several different unrelated people), and cutting off our access to communication is  not stopping the discussion, but merely making it impossible for normal work to continue. This is the world that we live in where internet and phone communication actually IS a necessity for life. I know I’ve mentioned before that more people have cell phones that toilets, and this is a great shocking statistic that is 100% true, but if I had to choose between a working phone connected to the internet and a toilet, I’d probably go for the phone too. There are plenty of bushes around here anyway. Still, I would like to reiterate that both are important and I’m working really hard with local partners in Chad and other parts of Africa where we have projects to make sure that people have access to clean water and toilets at the household level, both of which are necessary to combat water borne diseases.

A classic photo where everyone except the government official we were visiting was smiling.

How cute are Moussa's grandkids? I can't handle it.

Anyway, back to MY LIFE, the arrogant subject of this self-aggrandizing blog, since Emelie’s dot (note: it is NOT in fact spelt ‘dôte’ though that looks way cooler and even makes a vague amount of phonetic sense), I’ve had visitors (auditors and IAS head office people) and made a few trips to Dourbali to see Moussa.

Fixed my turn signal with a pocket knife!
Also Danem helped because he HATES seeing me work on the car.
He told me my brake fluid was empty so he refilled it for me.
Now my AC isn't working so I wonder--did he refill the wrong thing with the wrong thing?
I will never know because I don't know about brake fluid, just changing the turn signal fuse.

My beautiful birthday cake grâce à the Morrison family:
David baked it, Lucy decorated it, and Sophie let them.

Another one of Moussa's adorable grandkids.
So snuggly.

Some of my lovely sisters.

The mayor in the Dourbali office.

Pro tip: if you have a day that is usually hard because it brings up some painful memories,
go somewhere you can see great things that the Lord is doing--
here the chief of the village is hugging Moussa with all his might because we are drilling there.

Chief Adam Tom thanks God for water coming to his village.
And you guys pray because we keep having machine breakdowns and it's a tricky place to drill.

Prepping the house for the auditors was fun. We’d already de-ratted the place as mentioned in a previous post. And now we needed to deck everything out to prepare for visitors, buying new sheets and stocking up the fridge with breakfast foods. I left the purchasing of items to my colleagues, who have already noted that when I shop things are automatically more expensive and it really annoys them. When they got back with the bed sheets, I scurried around with them, sheeting up the beds that I moved into the house while they were out at the market. The first sets of sheets were pretty generic—hearts and stripes and such. But there was one stand-out set that I really appreciated. A green and white set with GUCCI written in all caps across the top and giant flies (yes, the insect, you read that correctly) decorating the bottom of the sheets and the top of the pillowcase. I’ve thought a lot about the designer of these sheets—probably more than I have thought about other more life-changing things, but I am really curious as to how this set of GUCCI Fly sheets ended up on the market. Maybe there was a computer program that randomly pairs fashionable name brands with an animal to create a decorative pattern, in which case we could have just as easily ended up with PRADA Chickens or CHANEL Manatees. Maybe someone was trying to make a play on words using turn of the century slang like “Gucci is so fly so let’s make Gucci fly sheets!” Or maybe I’m just so out of the fashion loop here in Chad that I haven’t realized that flies and Gucci are the hippest thing out there, while I’m still over here remembering those butterfly hair clips every girl but me used to know how to clip in successfully. I don’t think it’s an environmental thing like how we are supposed to be saving the honeybees. I’m all for that, but there are plenty of flies here in Chad, spreading those water borne diseases we were just talking about so I’m not yet ready to elevate their status to campaign for their salvation. Anyway, here are the photos so feel free to join in the speculation or advocate for your own haute couture-animal combo of choice. Send it to China and maybe it will be made and then exported to Chad, and my colleagues will buy it for our guesthouse.

So fashion! 

The stuff of actual nightmares: a giant fly crawling out of your pillowcase!!!!

The other really excellent purchase that my friends made for breakfast was definitely in an effort to please me. I’m currently very worked up about the fact that I saw online somewhere that the unemployment rate in Chad is 90%. That means only 10% of people have a job. I’ll allow for 10% of people have a job that gives them a contract, meaning people with small businesses and doing odd jobs like gardening or house keeping would not be in that employed 10% even though they have income. I’ll spare you my rant about the French educational system that has been badly implemented here and the lack of investment due to corruption and bad infrastructure, but I have somehow made it known within my circle of friends and acquaintances here that I like to support local entrepreneurs and buy locally made Chadian products, including a loose leaf spiced tea, dried mangoes, chili oil, shea butter soap, etc. The guy who brought me the breakfast stuff purchased on my behalf proudly pulled out a jar of jam—“It was made locally here in Chad, so we knew you would definitely want this!” So what do you think—tomato jam anyone? It’s made of tomatoes, sugar, and honey, according to the ingredients list.

Bon appétit!

Besides providing my guests with all the comforts of home, name brand sheets with flies on them and tomato preserves, I also visited Nadji’s garden last weekend. Nadji said, “It’s not far, just a bit past Douguia,” which is already about 80km away. Turns out it was another 50+km from Douguia, making one leg of the journey 130ish km. And I was driving. But why not—short weekend road trip! So I said yes and Nadji and his son Teodore showed up on my doorstep at 7am, as planned. I, naturally, was not yet ready, having not been able to convince myself to get out of bed before 6:30 on a Saturday. But just after 7, I was outside and I heard some puppy cries. I mentioned it to Nadji who said, “Yeah, there’s a puppy in the box in the back of your truck. We are taking it with us to the garden to stay with the guard and his wife there.” Obviously, I was not ok with a puppy in a box and I needed to see the puppy. I pulled her out (female) and she was covered in dirt and ticks, so Abiner (who had been there to play with Joe and Pika) helped me wash her while I ran around putting drinking water in the truck and getting some food and water for the puppy. After the puppy was cleaned, de-ticked by me (I’m a professional now) and wrapped in a towel inside of the cabin of our truck, we set out, still early enough to beat the political protests that were supposed to start on the other side of town.

Puppy!

The trip started out normally enough with me passing all the slow cars and muttering swear words at them all under my breath while also dodging potholes deep enough to swim in. We made it to the turn off for Douguia, and on that more remote road, we were frequently flagged down by people in search of a ride. I decided since this was personal business and not official, I could pick up any hitchhikers I wanted to pick up, and I do like being the strange nasara that pulls up and says, “Howdy traveler, going my way? Hop in!” It does make a sensation. I saw a group of ladies dressed up in the same cloth pattern, and we knew they were “Les Femmes de Charité” a women’s group from one of the large evangelical denominations here. They were on their way to a meeting in Dandi, and we were heading the same direction. I pulled over to let them in, and took advantage of the break from driving to cuddle the little puppy. A couple of the older ladies got in the cabin with us. Covid rules note that not more than 4 people are allowed in the cabin of a truck at one time because presumably one more person in the 5-seater cabins would mean automatic infection, but if you have one seat free, you’re fine. But we were far enough away from anyone who knew those rules, so we crammed in.

This is Baraka, whose parents work with Moussa.
Somehow he has acquired a plastic dinosaur, which his family thinks is a weird foreign toad.
I tried to explain dinosaurs, but I'm not sure it translated.

One of the hitchhiking ladies saw me with the puppy and said, “Oooh! A puppy!” in exactly the right voice you say those words with. She held out her hands to take her from me, like most ladies in church do with babies. Note: Chadian people, women and men, do not tend to be affectionate towards animals and it’s a rare person who does not throw something at a dog, let alone take a moment to pet one. This lady cuddled the puppy all the way to Dandi, petting her and singing “bishi, bishi, bishi” (Ngambaye for dog) over and over to her. I loved her.

Gazing in adoration at the little puppy.

Me and the hitchhikers (note: many more in the back of the truck)

Before you start thinking that these femmes de charité were actually a group of serial killers preying on nasaras and their puppies, Nadji knew several of these ladies and of course a bunch of them knew Moussa too. “Is he still in Dourbali?” Yes, he is. But I admit that once you pick up one group of hitchhikers, you get in the habit of it, and I picked up many more on the way back too. And then trying to prove that I wasn’t biased towards southerners (after picking up two groups of southerners), I accepted a couple of Arab men and an Arab woman with her baby. The men rode in the back of the pickup (probably not illegal here). And all of them wanted to go all the way to N’djamena, so I had to drive more carefully on the way back because I didn’t want to flip the truck with a bunch of passengers in it. It was a good exercise in caution for me and also a reminder about why we do not pick up hitchhikers—it’s easier to drive crazy if everyone is INSIDE the car. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before.

Chili peppers not from Nadji's garden

But I had to try one

Yeah. No regrets, but there was a little bit of pain...

Ngassi who is growing the chili peppers

The visit to Nadji’s garden was short and sweet. We were pretty close to the Lake, so nearing Boko Haram territory, but Nadji said we were fine. He has a nice little plot of land, and it was a lovely sunny day with a breeze and so quiet out there. The puppy, who Nadji has named “Patience” for unknown reasons, immediately began to run around and sniff her new home. The neighbor’s dog came over, and he is one of the sweetest Chadian dogs I’ve ever met—friendly to all, loved his new puppy friend—it’s going to be a good life for those guys. 

Puppy and her friend!

And I’m back in the capital, just in time for some political excitement, which has taken both my electricity and my internet. Will it come back on? We are unsure when. Until then, this will not be posted. And maybe when/if we get it back, it will all be boring old news, but I don’t have anything else to do for now, so I wrote it down anyway.

Here are some more photos from other trips: 

A photo that was taken by Abiner for unknown reasons.
There's a learning curve for figuring out how to use my phone.
I've got lots of photos of my hand shifting, some photos of the AC vents,
and a few of the mirrors. Thought I'd share for your gratification.

I love piles of shoes in front of a doorway.
Always feels like home for me.

Kids getting ready to go to school with little bro photobombing in the background.
The girls were mad at him yelling, "You can't be in the photo without your uniform!"

Favor and little Fatima. Favor has a beautiful singing voice.

Yes, me and Portrait Mode did take this amazing photo.

Brace yourself for some photos of my dogs on my very uncomfortable couch that I never sit on:

And finally: here is how Joe and Pika look at me when I'm eating Oreos. I do share. They liked them. Before you accuse me of being a bad dog-owner, Joe's original owner (Army guy who gave him to me) used to train him using Oreos and the obsession has lingered and been passed on to Pika. It is not my fault, and so far they have stayed in excellent health, except for the poison incident, which I don't talk about, and it had nothing to do with Oreos anyway.

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.