TCHAD: NEWSLETTER 4 AUGUST 2000
Well, hello again! It has been a while since my last letter: it may well be a while before my next .. I start work next week!
It’s a cool 26 degrees outside today ….. the locals are wearing their jerseys! The rainy season started with a vengeance some time in July. Whilst it only rains every 2 – 3 days, when it rains, well ….. IT POURS! Most of the trees that were going to fall have already done so but I still wouldn’t want to be outside when it rains. The Chari river has risen dramatically. Many of the islands & sand banks present in the river when we first arrived have disappeared & I haven’t seen the hippos for a while. I have been told that towards the end of the rainy season, the houses on the Cameroonian side of the river get flooded and many collapse, only to be rebuilt in the exact same location in anticipation of the next rainy season (and so on and so on and so on!!)
The insect population has increased significantly but is no where near as bad as I had been lead to believe it would be by our American & Mauritian friends. The insect situation is only slightly worse than that in Zimbabwe! It’s obvious that, having lived in Africa all of our lives, it has been much easier for us to adapt to life in Tchad compared with our ex pat friends!
And the frogs! There are small frogs everywhere. A few weeks ago, I walked into the dining room only to find 10 – 15 frogs the size of a thumb nail hopping around merrily. They must have squeezed in under the door. We had great fun trying to catch them to put them outside … kept the kids entertained for ages.
We have also been infested with mosquitos. Even with screens on the windows and everything closed up all of the time, they get in. It is very hard to avoid getting bitten, especially if your name is Lauren … they love her!!! They also don’t restrict their activity to the night like all other self-respecting mozzies … they are on the prowl 24 hours a day. With malaria being a real problem at this time of the year (a number of Paul’s employees have already contracted the disease this season!) we have opted to take anti-malarials for the rainy season as it is impossible to avoid being bitten (ask Lauren!) As soon as the rain stops and the puddles dry up at the end of September, the malaria risk disappears! Then “winter” starts in November (I believe the temperature actually drops to 20 degrees in December) Ah, bliss!
The rainy season has also had an interesting effect on our lizard population. I would call it spring-fever except that, traditionally, spring precedes summer and not autumn. I guess one cannot impose these weather traditions on a place like Tchad. Well, Laurens sex education has had to begin …. I couldn’t lie to her when she asked me why the lizards kept on climbing onto each other’s backs! So, along with the tiny frogs, there are a few small yellow-headed lizards which have been added to our garden zoo.
We have regular moo-ing and braying outside our house: we are very near to the abattoir and, at least three times a week, 4 or 5 herds of very bony cattle are herded past our driveway. I had been expecting the cattle to become fatter the further into the rainy season we get but this hasn’t been the case. From what I have seen, no matter how much food is available to the Chaddien animals, they remain skinny (the goats are the only exception to this)
We know a family who has two local dogs (which, by the way, make the SA pavement specials look positively pedigreed!) Anyway, these dogs get fed a huge amount AND supplement their diet with lizards and frogs and bugs that they find in the garden AND are de-wormed regularly and yet they are still very thin. They look no better off than their very much less fortunate brethren. My theory is this: (clearing of throat) the animals (except the goats, who are able to remain FAT even during the dry season) have evolved over centuries to survive on less than no food at all and no longer have any “fat cells” in their bodies (these have become defunct over time) and so are incapable of ever storing fat. I have heard that it is not safe to have a “western” dog here as it appears so fat to the locals that it has a very high risk of ending up in someone’s pot.
So, as you can see, we are surrounded by living creatures, even if they are not all pets. On the pet front, with copious quantities of tears from Lauren, we had to let the two large tortoises go (yes, the ones that I actually paid for.) Paul took them to a hopefully deserted but green spot and set them free. The problem was this: the cats (Maurice & Michelle) like stalking and pouncing on the tortoises. Now, the two small tortoises, having been blessed with some brain cells, see the cats coming and retreat into their shells (sensible things!) The two large tortoises, on the other hand, obviously decided that being pounced on by kittens was not acceptable and would reach out with their bony beaks and try to fight back. I don’t need to tell you that cats are faster than tortoises and that the tortoises always came off second best. After the third trail of blood along the paving outside from a badly scratched neck, we decided that it was only fair that we let the tortoises go. I do hope that the risk of them ending up on someone’s plate is lower than that of gangrene of the neck.
Don’t think that this is going to reduce the number of creatures in our garden … Paul has just phoned to say that Basie (his Afrikaans consultant… now there’s a story I must tell) has bought four baby hedgehogs in order to save them from becoming “hors-d’ oeuvres d’ hérisson “. So, guess where they are going to live (until they manage to escape) I can just picture Abakar’s face ( our gardener) …. He was the one who brought the bleeding tortoise saga to my attention. I just hope that the hedgehogs have some sense of self-preservation (I don’t think I could go through Laurens floods of tears a second time) I also hope that the cats are not partial to prickly-paw!
Right, now on to the juicy bits. A month or two ago, as we were preparing to have a braai with some Americans who had lived in Zim for a few years and who had recently returned from SA with some boerewors, Paul got a frantic phone call to say that Basie (of hedgehog fame) had knocked two men off a motorbike and, owing to the aggressiveness of the rapidly growing crowd, had left the scene as fast as he was able. I won’t bore you with all the details or brag that, after all these years I am still capable of making an excellent (if a little too hot) fire to braai boerewors on. The evening for us was a little disastrous but that was nothing compared to the time the two accident victims were having.
The one chap was bruised but OK but the other had broken his leg in three places and was in a coma. The local hospital admitted him but the surgeon was on leave for two weeks and so, little could be done with him there. After MUCH negotiation and many hours of Paul’s time taken up (and his vast capacity for being diplomatic being tested to the limit) the family decided that they wanted to send him to Egypt for treatment (I’m not sure that they didn’t just want him out of the way so they could tell Paul that he had died in order to collect their 6 000 000 francs CFA (approx. R60 000). Paul offered to take him to the French Army’s medical base for treatment (that’s where all ill ex pats end up) but the family refused. They claimed that if the French were allowed to operate on him, he would die (read:” be killed”) I was beginning to understand just how much the Chaddiens dislike the French. Well, after the payment of many medical bills (including food, vehicle oil etc etc) by Celtel, the surgeon returned and fixed the mans leg and all seems back to normal. The insurance company is still, however paying out money. During this whole saga, the family threatened to kill Basie and told Paul a number of times that if Paul had been French, they would have killed him too. So to all of you who have accused me of making Tchad sound like a really fun place to live, it is not without its risks!
It’s funny, but Paul’s African background is standing him in good stead. The people that he has to deal with seem impressed that he is not just another ex pat, or worse, another Frenchman. Well, we thought so until he was introduced to a very high up official (I think it was the Prime Minister but I may be wrong) as having been born in Zimbabwe to which the reaction was, “Oh, you’re a colonialist.”!!!! Thankyou, Mugabe!
Some other interesting facts about Tchad:
The country has just had a celebration in honour of it being 100 years since the beginning of French colonial rule …. A really strange thing for an African country to celebrate, I thought! They’ve even erected a huge monument to commemorate the occasion!
Oh, and if the power goes off, always check that all taps are switched off (electricity is used to pump water into the buildings, which means, no electricity, no water.) In the middle of the accident crisis, there was a power failure at the office. Paul unlocked the office the next morning to be greeted by a wave of water and the sound of Niagra Falls coming from the bathroom. He had just bought three new computers which had been unpacked and were waiting patiently on the floor for some new desks to arrive. Needless to say, that day was spent on flood damage control and the dismantling of computers in order that they could dry out. Thankfully, the computers still work! It keeps us entertained !!!
Oh, how could I forget! One of the reasons this letter is so late is that we returned to SA for a few very hectic weeks (apologies to all of those people I never got around to contact) You see, Paul had a meeting in Jhb and so I decided that he could down-grade his business-class flight to an economy one so that we could all go at minimal cost to ourselves! Well, at the last minute, the company moved Paul’s meeting to Amsterdam and so, I flew to Harare and then Joburg and Durban with the kids. They traveled amazingly well …. I was very impressed!
Flying into and out of Tchad is no mean feat as you may remember from my first trip. Well, it is actually not necessary to fly via Paris; there is an Air Ethiopian flight once a week into and out of N’Djamena. So we left at 4am on a Friday morning, arrived in Addis Ababa later that morning and were ferried to the Hilton Hotel (covered by the ticket although I paid a small surcharge to stay there as opposed to a lesser hotel … and thank heavens I did; if the Hilton has holes in its carpets and tiles falling off the bathroom walls, I’d hate to see the cheaper hotels!) We spent a night in the hotel (it was, by the way, clean and the food was excellent) and then flew to Harare the next day where we stayed with Paul’s Mom for a few days. Then on to Johannesburg and Durban and finally the great trek back to N’Djamena!
I could have bought another 5,6 kg’s of stuff in SA … our luggage ONLY weighed 54,4kgs on our return (it was about 23kgs on the trip out to SA) We were lucky … when we arrived at the airport in N’Djamena, Paul had bumped into someone who sold had him a number of generators ( I think). This man turned out to be very well connected (wrt the customs officials) and we were hurried through without so much as a questioning glance! Not that I bought anything of great value … just stuff like balloons, some dress material, clothes, cream for the kids’ skin (they are allergic to most), birthday gifts for ours and other children …. You can spend R100 on a colouring-in book and packet of crayons in N’Djamena ….etc etc.
The break was wonderful … I arrived in Joburg feeling like a real plaas – jaap … everything was new and shiny. If you have ever lived in Zim or another African country and visited SA for a holiday, you may remember that initial feeling of awe at the number of new cars, the wonderful array of goods to buy etc etc when you first arrive in Johannesburg. Well, multiply that feeling by at least ten!! I kept asking myself why on earth I would choose to live in Tchad but, having returned, one re-adjusts quickly. Now, I can hear those cynics amongst you wondering how I could say that SA looks wealthy etc but believe me, compared to Tchad, Zimbabwe seems filthy rich !!!
Having reached page five of this letter, I think that I should end it before it gets too long and you battle to down-load it. I just wanted to thank everyone who fed and fetched and carried us whilst we were in SA … we really had a great time!!
Cheers for now,
Fiona, Paul, Lauren & Guy
