NEWSLETTER NUMBER SEVEN ! 16 APRIL
Happy Easter everyone! What ? Another newsletter so soon ? Apart from it being the Easter weekend ( yup, Paul’s at the office! ) the school has a weeks holiday ( Spring Break) I still find it difficult to get my brain around the fact that those of you “down south” are heading into winter!
A fair amount has happened since I last wrote …..
We were invited by some of the American Embassy staff to spend one Sunday morning in the Embassy boat on the Chari river. We left at 8am complete with hats, long-sleeved shirts and sunblock, after having convinced Lauren that the water was very shallow and that we would be quite safe. (Ever since Paul fell, rather spectacularly, out of a small canoe at Lapalala when Lauren was about 18 months old, she has been petrified of boats!) We went on a search for hippos and elephants and were richly rewarded. We saw two large families of hippo and got nervously close to them …. The helmsman ( the man who operated the rather underpowered outboard motor ) seemed to take great delight in coercing them to move … I do recall one time, however, when WE moved pretty fast as the hippos started to disappear under the water and head towards us!
On the return trip to N’Djamena we were hailed by some Cameroonians who said that there were elephants a little way from the river so we climbed the rather steep riverbank and found a LARGE herd of elephants not very far off under the trees. The locals seemed to have a far healthier respect for elephants than hippos and we were NOT allowed to get very close. There was a village a hundred metres or so away, so I guess they may have experienced at first hand, the havoc caused by an irate family of pachyderms. For us, this was a FAR FAR FAR more impressive sighting of elephants than the “sighting” at Wasa a few weeks earlier (we really did see elephants at Wasa, Hilary. We can show you the photo to prove it !!)
The boat trip itself was very interesting … we passed villages, drinking camels, fishing nets and baskets set up in the river and all manner of fascinating examples of Cameroonian and Chadian life. ( For those who don’t remember, the Chari river forms part of the border between the two countries.) We even got stuck once or twice on the riverbed as the level of the river has dropped considerably….. in fact the day we went out on the river was the last day that the boat was to operate until after the rainy season is over. Our next trip has to be to Lake Chad … we are going there at the end of the week so watch this space.
Have I ever told you about the “ tappez – rouges “ that they have in this country (Paul blames the Americans … apparently they do this in the USA too! ) Every time the president or an important visitor ( such as Gaddafi) travels around the city they close all of the roads along the route …. for at least an hour or two before the event is to take place! This is all very well, but there are not that many ways around N’Djamena and one is likely to get stuck on some back road! Living near to the airport and Madame Déby ( the president’s mother) has its disadvantages ….
A few weeks ago I had Christopher and Katie (world bank children) over to play with Lauren & Guy. At 5.30pm I got this frustrated call from their mother to say that she had tried every route possible and wasn’t able to get to our house to fetch her children. Mary is, however, a resourceful sort and she found a secluded spot out of sight of any army officials and placed her “World Bank” flag into the holder on the bonnet of her car. She then convinced them that she was going to visit Madam Déby and they let her through. I wonder whether they watched her as she turned away from Madame’s rather elaborate house and disappeared down our road. Needless to say, she had to stay for supper as she could hardly have driven out past the armed guard only a few minutes later with her children in the car.
Well, last week, I had dropped Paul off at the office after school as I needed the car to run a number of errands that afternoon. I couldn’t get home again! All of the roads to the airport had been blocked by Déby’s private army as had Avenue Charles de Gaulle (main road) and the road out to Farcha (where our world bank friends live).(I should add here that the President’s private army is not well known for its’ politeness and good humour)
I was finally able to get back to school where Lauren and Guy had art that afternoon. We were sans water and shoes. Lauren’s teacher, who was taking the art class, very kindly went home to fetch drinking water for us. One gets very uncomfortable after 3 hours without water when it is 40+ degrees outside. I spent the time sorting classroom things out! At 4.30 pm I was convinced that the tappez-rouge would be over, but no…… after 30 minutes of driving around in square circles, Paul walked to an accessible place and we picked him up. The theory was that he knew the roads better than I did and would be able to find a route home … ordinarily, this would have been a good theory …. We eventually bought some chocolate biscuits ( the kids were, by now, ravenous and exhibiting the sort of behavior expected of a pack of half starved wild dog pups!) and we walked back to Paul’s office to wait out the tappez-rouge. It was close to 6pm when we finally got home ( so much for all of those things I was going to get done!)
Life continues to be a challenge ………..
There is a very narrow, one lane bridge which crosses one of the larger tributaries of the Chari river en route to the border post between Chad and Cameroon. They have a lollipop man at each end of the bridge who control the flow of traffic with their red / green lollipops. The bridge itself must be at least 50m long and not the most modern! First you suffer the frustration of waiting for the sign to be turned around to green ( no-one actually waits in an orderly line … there is a lot of pushing and shoving and squeezing towards the front , if you could imagine this of a whole lot of cars and trucks) Then you shoot up a quick prayer heavenward as you begin to navigate the bridge. I didn’t mention that pedestrians, bicycles and motorbikes don’t appear to have to wait for the “go” signal and so, apart from surviving the dangerously noticeable wobble that the bridge produces, you also have to dodge all of these other people and vehicles coming straight for you. This would be a little less stressful if it weren’t for the fact that bicycles and motorbikes are used to carry large quantities of goods in this country and sometimes a bike and it’s load can measure two metres across!
Anyway, towards the middle of the bridge, part of the “safety” railing has been knocked out ( it has been like that since I got here a year ago). A few days ago, one of those huge desert trucks had an accident. ( the ones (trucks) you see in pictures of the Sahara Desert which are loaded up with goods and on top of which are precariously perched many many people swathed in turbans and long flowing clothes) Apparently, the truck went over the edge where the railing was missing, got stuck in those railings that were still there and dangled over the side of the bridge. The bridge must be at least 30m above the river at the moment and the river is VERY shallow . Over 40 people were thrown off the top of the truck and fell to the river below to be crushed by huge sacks of sugar and salt which quickly followed suit. It seems that every week, some major accident occurs in this country! It is a relief to everyone to know that they are building a new TWO lane bridge at the moment …. everyone is waiting in anticipation for its completion …. ????? (but that’s a whole new issue!)
Paul recently went to Amsterdam for a meeting (thank heavens, we were running out of essentials such as Lip-Ice, which you cannot buy here) One of his family obligations when he goes there is to return with a half-round of Dutch cheese (approx 4kg). The day after he purchased this “orange-gold”, they slapped a ban on the exportation of all animal products (including cheese etc) out of Holland as a precaution against the spread of foot & mouth. Paul decided to try to smuggle it out and plead ignorance to the ban if he got caught. After all, he doesn’t speak Dutch!!
He was successful in getting the cheese to Paris but, while he arrived in N’Djamena as planned, the suitcase with the cheese (& chocolate) did not! It was either sitting at Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris at approx 5 degrees Celsius (we hoped) or in Bangui in Central African Republic at 40+ degrees Celsius!! To make matters worse, Air France suddenly closed down their operation in Chad …. There were no flights, the offices didn’t open, people (and our suitcase) were stranded in all sorts of obscure places etc etc . Apparently, the local tax department had discovered an “inconsistency” in the airline’s books and had suggested that a tidy sum in the back pocket might smooth out the problem. Well, the French reacted as one would like to expect to this request but their closing down of service was a little inconsiderate (I guess if you have a near monopoly you don’t lose your customers … the only other option is Air Afrique … and I don’t even want to talk about them!)
Meanwhile, we had written off ever seeing our case again …. If it was in Paris, it was sure to have been broken into by now and the cheese and chocolate would have been infinitely edible; if it was sitting in Bangui at those temperatures, the suitcase would have got up on its own and walked out the door! Well, just less that a week later, Air France resumed service and, miracle of miracles, our case arrived untouched! The cheese and chocolate are WONDERFUL…mmmmmm
Well, school ends on 18 June (as does my career as a junior school teacher…hooray !!! ) Lauren has started reading and is writing short sentences … our little girl is growing up….. Guy is his usual happy self …. He has developed this terrible sense of humour, a characteristic which people are going to both love and hate!!
We will be heading to SA via Kenya (for a few days of game viewing) to spend time in Joburg with old friends and Durban with my family which gets larger and larger ( in number) as we speak! I may well send you a short (I’m sure that I am capable) message before we go …. I have to tell you all about our visit to Lake Chad ( at 40+ degrees C )
Hope that you are all well and enjoying the cooler weather (we are eating our hearts out !)
Until next time
Fiona, Paul, Lauren & Guy!
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