A Little Road Trip

Last Friday, I excitedly set off for my first weekend away from N’Djamena since I arrived in September, to a ‘resort’ for a retreat about 1 hour away. The direction to which were as follow: Go North out of the city, take the left road opposite the Castel Beer sign and then the next left. The chances for getting lost were minimal, what could possibly go wrong?!

With a car load of fellow Nasara’s, 5 hours later we arrived! My car was obviously also very much looking forward to a decent run out of town and in its excitement totally froze- that’s right, the rear wheels decided to stop turning while driving at 60mph! Not good. Thank God there was no one on the road at that precise moment or else the results could have been very different. But I managed to keep the car on the road and we came to a grinding metal, burning rubber filled stop, diagonally right across the middle of the road. The road then refilled with its usual traffic and we were soon surrounded by lots of animated Arabic chatter as various passer-by’s stopped to provide their opinion on what went wrong and after lots of shoving and banging of hammers to release whatever had frozen we were pushed off the road.

Amazingly, in the midst of the chaos I looked up to see the familiar face of my neighbour’s taxi man and he took control of the situation, phoning for the Fifth Emergency Service- i.e. The hospital’s driver and a mechanic. As we waited for our ‘knight in a not so shiny white, not running very well Nissan’, we watched the sun near the horizon, while dreaming of the swimming pool that awaited us and enjoyed the kindness of the chief from a nearby village, who had taken his wife to our hospital just the month before!

When Dogo the hospital drive turned up I could have kissed him! Instead I did a little dance- he laughed as he is used to me, the mechanic however looked slightly scared!!

As the sun set my car was driven away (still grinding and not smelling very healthy) and we were fetched by some other friends for the weekend’s retreat, during which I reflected how well protected and looked after we had all been!

You have to worry when your 'rescue' car looks in as bad shape as the one it's rescuing!

Camels and Christmas... (better late than never!)

From Taxis to another form of Chadian transport… camels! What better way to pass a warm Christmas eve than bouncing along on the back of a camel enjoying the sights of the Chari river from our little trek across N’Djamena’s golf course. Yep, you heard right, camel riding across a golf course! The green was, well not green, and though the welcome sign warned us that golfers took priority, there weren’t many of those either. And so I, along with the Hotchkin family, passed a pleasant hour or so bobbing along, occasionally breaking out into the compulsory “We 3 Kings ..”.

Decorating a twig with tinsel, giving and receiving presents, singing carols and cheesy Christmas songs (I’m dreaming of a white Christmas being a particular favourite), watching the Snow Man and eating roast chicken complete with all the trimmings- stuffing, gravy and even (tinned) Brussel sprouts (which were truly disgusting!) meant that Christmas was passed in a similar, if not warmer way, “just like the ones I used to know”!

However, one of my favourite parts of the day was handing out presents to the children who were inpatients at the hospital over Christmas- the delight and awe that shone from their faces when they realised they could keep the little toy was so humbling and a real pleasure to behold. Of course, there were also the little ones who were just down right terrified of the Nasaras (White People) coming  towards them that no amount of present giving could diminish their screams!

It was a great way to follow up the Oscar winning performance from the hospital staff who, as angels in white lab coats and shepherds in Arab dress, recreated The Nativity, Chadian style, for the inpatients, relatives and villagers of Guinebor. Meanwhile, just behind the action of the birth of Jesus was action of a similar kind; a baby was born!