Another arrival… Abéché
On my first day of work, the lead administrator took my passport and disappeared for a few hours. Upon her return, she said that I should receive my government authorization to travel outside N’Djamena to my base in Abeche. This is all normal protocol, so I am told.
By the time Wednesday rolled around, my authorization still hadn’t come through. In the afternoon, the administrator assured me that it would come in the morning, so that I could catch the second flight of the day to Abeche, for which I would have to leave the compound at 9.30a.m. At 9.10 the next morning, I was told my authorization arrived and I had 20minutes to be out the front gate with my luggage, ready to go.
While I don’t notice it during the day, I do notice the evening prayer call around 5p.m. when work tapers down and evening begins.
The driver dropped me off to the airport lounge, full of men in robes staring at me suspiciously—I was both the only woman and the only white person in the airport. Fortunately, I joined two other colleagues, a doctor and mechanic, also traveling to Abeche who distracted me from many heavy glances.
South Africans piloted our flight of thirty or so passengers (larger than I expected), directing us onto the landing strip in Abeche occupied by three government army helicopters. Walking off the plane to the tiny airport, I finally felt the true hot heat of the desert sun in eastern Tchad.
Despite the warnings, my first impression of the compound in Abeche was a pleasant surprise. There are trees here! Banana and papaya. I don’t even know if they produce any fruit, but at least it’s green. This, I’m discovering more and more is a true rarity.
I headed straight to the office, directly across the sandy unpaved road from the living compound. Floppy-eared sheep were the only living creatures in the road at the peak heat of the day. Later in my office, for the first time I heard a loud bleating and panting, which I presumed was from the sheep—the only living animal I had seen until that point. I’ve since discovered that those are the donkeys who “sing” constantly.
I easily felt at home with the Anglophone team in Abeche as we began to share meals, Gala (the local beer), stories of travel and work throughout the continent, and challenges of Tchad. The second night, a Friday, we decided to go out for drinks before our 8p.m. curfew set in. We were joined by NGO pilots who were completely burnt out (in more sense than one), evading their curfews and attempting to evade their life in Abeche.
Driving back home from the expat restaurant we noticed that all the trees on the side of the dusty road were cut down. The charcoal ban—supposedly set in place for environmental protection, but in fact were am attempted to prevent rebels from smuggling weapons in charcoal bags—apparently has now left residents with no source for fuel. Save the trees on the side of the road that is. As I said, green is a rarity here. And so it becomes more and more of a rarity.
At 2 a.m. on Monday morning our neighbor’s compound, the office and living quarters of a French NGO, was broken into by five armed only speaking Arabic. Causing little damage, the men gladly took off with one of the NGOs hard top jeep and a few mobile phones.
Tuesday, a colleague and I planned to leave for a quick visit to Hadjer Hadid, the village next to one of the largest Darfurian refugees in eastern Tchad where we run health programs. We left the compound for the airport at 7a.m. The “airport” is perhaps and exaggeration. It’s one room, with a petite boutique in the corner selling imported cookies and serving local tea and Nescafe. There are a few seats, 30 maximum and two “check-in” tables set up in the morning with hand-written signs of four different destinations—towns accompanying an NGO-supported refugee camp.
The compound here is truly a little slice of paradise—sans la mer—with individual village-style thatched-roofed huts and a true family feeling with the all African expat senior staff. This is truly refreshing compound to the heavy dust, arms, paranoia and confinement in Abeche. I could be camping underneath the Colorado sky. But the bleating donkeys remind me that I’m not!
During the days, I feel as though I’m melting in the incredibly hot, dry heat and have found reasons to escape the office to go to the camp, only 5 km away, both days. The camp is not quite as I expected as most of the housing is actually locally built, not UNHCR donated tents. Apparently, that’s a whole different, contentious subject. Our health centre there is well-organized, staffed by expert Chadians who undoubtedly know more about the refugees and how things function than any expat does.
It’s from Hadjer Hadid, underneath the clear and vast desert stars, that I post this entry. I already feel like I’ve been here for months, yet it’s not been two weeks yet. As I imagine, the time here will pass slowly yet quickly.
