N'Djamena Marathon

 

Jesse wanted a photo of us under the sign that said "Marathon de la Paix"
What a marathon it was!

A few days ago I saw an ad on Facebook for a race to be held in my city on the weekend in solidarity with Sudan put on by Sudanese youth living in N’djamena. It was advertised as a “marathon 5k.” I figured the distance would be 5km because Chadians usually say “marathon” to mean a running race of any distance, but you never know. The advertisement was sufficiently vague on other information as well, but it had a start and end location, a beginning time and a date. In the comments people were asking for more information about how to run, and the response was being sent a screenshot of the same advertisement that we were all already looking at. I decided to send a message, and I was sent a phone number to call. I don’t like calling numbers I don’t know, so I sent a text message. I got no response and I forgot about it until I had a call later that night. Usually I don’t answer numbers I don’t recognize, but I did for some reason. Our conversation was as follows:

Me: Bonsoir Salam Allo (because I didn’t know what language to speak when I don’t know who is calling).

Him: Bonsoir.

Long pause….

Me: Uh..excuse me, but can you please tell me who is calling?

Him: Mohamed Idriss. (This doesn’t help me much—including being the name of our current president, it is a very common name here). Who are you?

Me: Uh…yeah…but you called me?

Mohamed Idriss (not the president): Oh yeah. I’m calling about the marathon.

And then the rest of the conversation was about how to register (give name, age, and contact number) and also he mentioned that they had met a guy who is really great at organizing races and the race was going to be 10km. I signed up and signed up Jesse, my friend from Nigeria who has run with me a couple times. The first time he ran, I was thinking he was going to be miserable and stop early because last time I had guys tell me they wanted to run with me and that it would be no problem because they play football a lot, they died after 1km. Jesse had said he wanted to run and 5km was no problem because he plays football, but he is also a good runner, so he was fine, and I had to keep up a faster pace than I wanted to the whole time to make sure I didn’t embarrass myself. I did also try to remind myself that he is 10 years years younger than me and that helped sooth the ego a bit too.

Hissein, Jesse, random vertically challenged nasara, Tresor

The night before the race, my evil Cameroonian neighbors decided to have a loud drunken orgy that made everyone miserable. They were still going, screaming and drunk singing and peeing all over everyone’s houses when I left at 6:40, and I was not in a great mood. I knew there was no point in getting to the race on time, but I did anyway. My friend Tresor who is a great runner and runs all the N’djamena races told me that it was for sure 10km and he had gotten there at 6:30am and was already texting me about it. 

Jesse and I got there and found a group of people looking for their race numbers. At one point a line formed but then the organizers started yelling out names (Mohamed Idriss, Mohamed Abdullah, Mohamed Issa, etc) and the line system fell apart quickly. Eventually we found our numbers—pretty quickly actually: we were 002 and 003 because I was one of the first to register for the race. We were also given a couple of little vest top things, which we were told were for advertising. Jesse had “American cola” (a local coke brand) and I had “Planet” which is also a type of beverage. We asked about pinning the numbers on our shirts, and were directed to the guy with a stapler, who was stapling numbers to people. Two minutes later, the stapler was broken. Were there any spare staplers? No. They started breaking off bits of staples and handing them out so people could pinch them with their fingers and mold them into pins to hold the numbers. I was not good at this and Jesse and Hissein helped. Hissein agreed to run in Steven’s place because Steven wasn’t feeling well, but he’d told me he would run. Steven, Hissein, and Tresor are deaf friends of mine who are all great athletes and helping to film a dictionary for Chadian Sign Language. (We want to make a dictionary app, so if you know anyone who can help make apps, please tell me.) Tresor is well known in the running community because he is an excellent runner and he trains people. Hissein and Steven prefer basketball to running, but wanted to come along for fun.

Stapling by hand

At 8am, the race still hadn’t started and it was getting hotter. By 8:30, just before we lined up, an announcement was made: this race is not going to be 10km. It is going to be 2 kilometers 300 meters. (According to my watch, it didn't even end up being 2km, and I didn’t cut off the corners like other people did.) 

Post-race with Tresor and Hissein laughing as they bent down
to be in the same photo with me and Jesse.
Jesse said he bent down too to have some self-respect,
which is why it looks like we are the same height when actually he is taller than me.

So everyone is lined up, now ready for a short sprint to Place de la Nation, and the start line happens to be right next to the city morgue. So as people are jogging around and pumping each other up, cars are driving up full of mourners with photos of the deceased precariously perched on their roofs. It was an awkward juxtaposition. 

This is the starting line where we kept having to move over
to let mourners through

The guy who informed us of our race distance change clapped two wooden blocks together and we all sped off. While there were a couple of policemen at one corner, the other roads we were on weren’t really blocked off and motorcycles and cars dodged us as we dodged potholes and it was all very exciting. 

The beautiful and amazing Fraida

We crossed the finish line and went to chat with Tresor and Hissein who were way ahead of us (note that Jesse and I are also half their height) and unfortunately they didn’t win. Our friend Fraida (not deaf but still very cool) who also runs in our neighborhood won for the women—not at all a surprise. She is a badass runner who has run in competitions around the world. She went to train in Kenya a few months ago, but told me it wasn’t worth it because it was too easy for her. We took a lot of photos, and as the only nasara, I was invited to be in many photos. I was also asked to do an interview for a radio station in Arabic. I specified that my Arabic is a mishmash of multiple accents and grammatical patterns, but they were happy. I refused to answer a question giving my honest opinion about the current president (Mohamed Idriss) and his Sudan policies because I am a foreigner and I don’t want to get kicked out of the country. I was able to say how great the organizers did (I mean is it really important to have decided on a route before the race day?) and how I’m sure they will do other great things. I should note that there were some Chinese guys there as well. I chatted a bit with one of them, but they don’t usually speak French and so people don’t often try to speak with them so I doubt they got too many interview requests. When I told this story to my friend Naomi, she said it reminded her of the time I was interviewed for Chinese TV when I accidentally joined the communist party, which was funny because I was remembering it too. I always managed to look really gross and sweaty when I’m interviewed for the news and usually have nothing important to say either. I don’t think I wrote about that for the blog because it happened before I started blogging, but I have it in a journal somewhere. Maybe I’ll publish it one day.

All miked up and waving my hands around for a radio interview, as one does.

Anyway, we planned to leave after Tresor, Hissein and Steven left to go to work. But the nasara effect worked against me and I was stopped by a sweet young Sudanese girl who asked me please to stay for the presentation about the desire for unity for Sudan and Chad. I didn’t feel I could say no and Jesse graciously stayed with me. He was really fun to have around because we could joke around in English and he was very careful to take lots of photos of me in awkward moments. 

Post-run with Jesse

Our lovely Sudanese girl found a couple of t-shirts for us, which was nice. Jesse got one in French and I got one in Arabic. Then we were handed bottles of red soda (Planet brand!) and little boxes of food while speeches started. They were long and flowery and I enjoyed the heckling from some guys sitting behind us, one of whom I’ve also run with in my neighborhood.  He’s actually caught me at the end of a couple of my runs when I was planning to stop early and dragged me home. Finally speeches were over, and it was time for awards. They handed them out to the 3 fastest women and the 3 fastest men. The average time to complete the race for them was 5 minutes something. 

Then they announced two more winners: the veteran category. This was a nice way of saying the winners for the two oldest competitors in the race. Guess who won for the women? That’s right—I won best geriatric woman runner for the Marathon. A truly remarkable achievement. I’m sure you’re all very impressed. And if any of you are slightly older than me, pat yourself on the back because anyone could run 2km and if you ran and were old, you won. 

Surrounded by the press who were there to note my achievement

With the Veteran Man winner
whose face shows how honored he was to receive this award.

Finally we were able to leave after the awards. Jesse dragged me away saying I talk too much, but I mean, I was an award winner. People wanted to be near me to bask in the glow of my success. Jesse and I decided just to walk home, as my house is not far from Place de la Nation. I think in all, including our 2km race, we didn’t even go 8km by the time we got home. And also—while Jesse was taking photos of me getting my award, people took our food. Oh well—they can never take my Veteran Medal from me. I earned that. By being old.

Kwaheri Marafiki Wangu (Swahili from Google translate--I did know the Kwaheri and the rafiki parts)

I just sent off two of my three Kenyan colleagues for the long, roundabout, UN flight that will finally get them home after nearly 7 months of Chad. We never meant for them to be separated from their families this long, but they were so gracious about it and patient as we waited for an opportunity to get them home.  

 I’ve worked with Emmanuel a long time, as he is our drilling chief here in Chad, and he is just a wonderful man of God with a servant’s heart. He works so hard with very few breaks, and his work is hot and dusty and sweaty and he never complains. He’s a hero to many across Chad who have water because of his hard work.

Old friends. 

Wearing the neverthirst Uganda shirt I gave him
a while ago, but standing in front of the majestic
flag of Chad!

Henry is a new friend and we’ve been stuck together pretty closely for the last 6+ months. He lived in the other house on my compound, and we hung out a lot due to lack of other company and proximity. He does an embarrassingly accurate impression of me driving, and he taught me Swahili insults to yell at the other drivers in my way so that I use less English profanity. He’s also been sucked into my hobbies a bit, now running 3 times a week and building up from being a non-runner to running 10ks on the weekend. He’s also taken on the most American thing about me and measures his runs in miles instead of kilometers. And he's thinking about getting a dog someday, after joining me most afternoons to walk Joe and/or one of the other dogs. They will all miss him. 

Giving them the leftover bones from dinner

Personally, I was a failure as a swimming student. I thought that the water was too cold and at least the last teacher I had that I remember the most was not a stereotypical Canadian nice guy (some Canadians CAN ruin lives, even if most are wonderful people). But it turns out that I’m a really good swimming teacher and Henry went from dog-paddling to breast stroke to front crawl to diving for coins in the pool. We discovered a mutual appreciation for the classiest of all film genres: the action comedy. If you laugh a lot and something blows up, it’s a superior movie. He made chapatis and mandazi for me. And I made pizza and chocolate chip cookies for him. I took him to the hospital to get some tests done when he was ill and he let me cry on his shoulder after a particularly hurtful day. And I will miss him, but I’m so happy he gets to be back with his wife and children. He was so excited to finally be leaving that he was giddy about it. But I appreciate that it is not because he doesn’t love Chad (he bought a Chad t-shirt and we did a photoshoot in front of the biggest national monument before he left), it’s because he loves his family so much and really needs to be with them. Long distance work away from your family is fairly normal in many parts of the world, but I hope we can find a better system next year if we can get Henry back that will allow him more time at home. (Prayers for this appreciated!)

Final photoshoot before leaving Chad

Waiting for tests at the hospital

Roadtripping to get photos and videos for neverthirst

With la belle Emelie who is also a wonderful friend

In other news from here, rainy season has arrived. My front yard has a perpetual giant puddle in it that the dogs are loving. Speaking of dogs, I’ve now got 4. I’m hoping to be back down to three in a few weeks if the Americans come back. Puppy/Kwach/Kakilé is no longer a Tiny Puppy. She has fattened herself on 3 pairs of my shoes, one pair of the guard’s shoes (I reimbursed him for his loss), a chunk of the sofa (I promise to replace it before I leave this house!), all of York’s chew toys that were brought from America (I’ll call it payment for all the food that I’ve bought for York this past month+, and York has helped with the chewing). She’s currently working her way through a baseball that I hope was not of sentimental value. I did not know what was inside a baseball. But now I do. It’s all over my house.

Should I have named Flip "Dobby" or "Wile E Coyote"?

Joe and Flip insist on coming to work with me every day.

My pack of dogs

I’ve also had some fun bringing trucks back from the field to N’djamena. Victor (our last remaining Kenyan who we hope to send home soon) and I were the nominated drivers. He would drive one truck, and I would drive the other. I told him I would drive the truck that was worse because he is a slow driver and I wanted us to stay together. If I drive the car that works well, then I will inevitably leave him in my dust. This is a joke we have about Victor driving versus Leif or me driving. Victor is slow and methodical and doesn’t even pass old lady drivers. Leif and I get competitive about how fast we can go, Leif doesn’t notice bumps until it is too late, and I pass anyone who dares to be in front of me.  I’ve been teasing Victor about this for some weeks, and I noticed that he started to tell me about all the times he actually did drive fast. Apparently he used to have a bad reputation for killing cars. Anyway, I apologized for teasing him too much, and he said he wasn’t bothered, but when we drove back together from Dourbali with the cars, he left me in his dust (rainy season hadn’t started yet). I had to follow the plume of black smoke that poured out of that car. In the end he had insisted on driving the bad car, and having recently driven that car after we had it “repaired”, I’m very grateful that he did, and I’ve sent it to be REPAIRED again. Anyway, Victor CAN drive fast, but he prefers not to in town. Noted. I remain grateful that traffic is a rarity in Chad, and road rules are optional--pass anyone anytime you like! And I will, while yelling "mjinga wewe!" at them. 

With Henry and Victor at our favorite Lebanese restaurant for Covid-pick up of course.

Emanuel telling me what was wrong with the truck
once I got it home and couldn't make the steering wheel turn anymore.
Apparently it's the hydraulic something.

And finally, we’ve completed a bunch of wells, rehabilitations, and biosand filters in all the Neverthirst Africa countries, and that’s been really encouraging to see in spite of the corona-restrictions. In one location that I can’t specify for security reasons, the villagers were desperate to see water in their village. People had tried to drill there before and all had failed. We didn’t know it at the time, but they took measures into their own hands to assure our success, calling witchdoctors to pray verses from their Holy Book over the drilling site, sacrificing chickens, and burying one near the location where we were going to drill. And soon EVERYTHING went wrong. The machines broke down for no logical reason. The water tanker hired to bring water to location would go to the water source and there would be no water, but when they drove away, the water came back. There were ferocious rainstorms. After drilling a borehole that he was sure would be successful, the driller was shocked when we found that the borehole was actually dry. He could think of no reason why there would not be water, and in his 20+ years of experience, this had never happened to him. We asked others for their opinions as to why it didn’t have water, and still no answers. Our local ministry partner prayed and then he found out about the sacrifices and the witchdoctors. So he prayer-walked the whole village. He preached from the Bible, and prayed over the new site. And our drilling partners drilled again. And this time we got a bore hole with a 7m3 yield  (very high yield) and the people in that village are saying, “Wow! Prayers in the name of Jesus are powerful!”

biosand filters

water from a new bore hole

If we hadn’t failed on the first attempt, the people would have credited their witchdoctors and sacrifices with the success of the borehole. But because it did fail and we drilled again, they got to see the power in the name of Jesus, which they would not have seen otherwise. It encouraged me to know that sometimes things that seem like epic failures in our lives might actually  be a part of God’s plan to amaze us with something that we never would have seen if our original plans had gone the way we hoped they would. We don’t always get to see the reason why hard things happen to us in our lives. Sometimes everything sucks, and it hurts, and we only ever get to see the mess this side of Heaven. But sometimes we get the Joseph moment, “What you intended for evil, God meant for good.” And I wanted to share that with you because sometimes we have to hold on to other people’s moments when ours aren’t coming, and trust that God is still good even when we aren’t seeing Him answer the deepest, hardest prayers of our lives. If we can’t see it in our lives, seeing it for others can be encouraging.  Honestly, in the ugliest parts of my heart, as I pray the hardest, deepest prayers in my life, there are some blessing stories that don’t really make me feel so much encouraged as resentful, but seeing the marginalized, the vulnerable, the forgotten people get a high yield bore hole in the middle of a dry and weary land, THAT is a story that I will hold on to. And you can hold on to it too, if you like.

OK-that’s my sermon done. Now I will inflict you with many photos of my dogs and my friends and my work.

Henry wanted to make sure to stop and get photos
of the town names in between N'djamena and Dourbali
to prove that he has been to Senegal!

And sometimes Joe made Henry sit in the back because he is spoiled.

Does your face mask match your dress?
It should!

Henry tries camel milk for the first time

Hanging with the men around the bowl of camel milk,
just before I started to feel miserably sick.

Even our nicest paved roads crumble

Thanks to Henry for this photo of me and my friend Fatima

I just really liked this guy!
He's got a cool hat and a great smile.

Another friend who drove us out to the village,
by that I mean that we followed him on his motorcycle
because there are no roads.
And he's holding a guinea fowl we brought back for Henry and Victor to have for dinner.
Tastes like chicken!

Antani and her beautiful daughters,
they are only a tiny bit screamy around Joe.
They liked Kwach/Kakilé though.

Emelie and Amanda Chad monument photo!

Emelie drove me and the boys home after work one day.

I let Henry drive the unpaved part of the trip back to N'djamena.
You can see by his expression how excited he was about this.
Note: we do not drive on the same side of the road as they do in Kenya
so it is even more impressive.
Although, having said that, when there is no road, the side doesn't matter.
But the stick shift is on the opposite side and it can be tricky to switch that.

I'm not sure what Moussa and I are gesturing wildly about here,
but thanks for this action shot, Henry!

Henry and the Dar Salam of Chad

A sprite that we found at the store
that is meant to be sold only on airlines.
I guess they had to sell it to stores with all the cancelled flights.

When there is no power in your office,
it helps that your HR/Finance Manager is an accomplished electrician.

Got to celebrate this wonderful woman's bday.
She is one of my favourite people in the entire world.

Another Henry photoshoot classic

I took Kwach swimming today. She scratched me in the face.
I thought since she insists on playing in her water bowl that maybe she would like it.
I was wrong.

The excited greeting of Joe on his return from the office.
Kwach loooooves him.

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.